GOD'S 
PUPPETS 


William 


White 


B 


J  fr^A^  t 

GOD'S  PUPPETS 


THE  MACMILLAX  COMPANY 

N*W  YORK  •    BOSTON*  •   CHICAGO  •   DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •    SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMTLLAN  &  CO.,  LOOTED 

CALCUTTA 


THE  MACMILLAX  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 


GOD'S  PUPPETS 


BY 


WILLIAM  ALLEN  WHITE 

AUTHOR  OF  "A  CERTAIN  RICH  MAN,"  "IN  OUR  TOWN,' 
"THE  COURT  OF  BOYVILLE,"  ETC. 


"All  service  ranks  the  same  with  God — 
"With  God,  whose  puppets  best  and  worst 
"Are  we.     There  is  no  last  nor  first." 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1916 


Copyright,  1914,  1915, 
By  THE  CURTIS  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 


Copyright,  1916, 


Copyright,  1916, 

By  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published,  March,  1916. 


i 


GOD'S  PUPPETS 


919879 


GOD'S  PUPPETS 

A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE 
PART  I 

IN  that  early  and  unlovely  day  in  our  national 
life  when  men  coming  home  from  the  Civil  War 
still  regarded  pain-giving  as  one  of  the  high  vir 
tues,  the  Times-Globe  never  referred  to  Colonel 
Longford  less  gently  than  as  "  that  human  orang 
utan."  His  presence  was  esteemed  by  the  same 
authority  and  in  those  days  as  a  "  portable  plague 
spot."  In  a  great  black  sheet-iron  box  locked  with 
a  log-chain  and  padlock —  a  box  whereon  the  edi 
tor's  rifle  rested,  a  mute  token  of  his  willingness 
to  assist  might  in  making  right  —  were  filed  away 
records  of  the  evil  men  had  done  in  the  town,  in 
the  county,  in  the  State  and  in  the  nation.  That 
box  was  a  kind  of  black  Ark  of  the  Covenant  which 
the  editor  kept  with  his  fellows,  and  in  the  box, 

i 


2  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

he  always  claimed,  were  records  and  documents 
whose  lightest  word  would  send  Colonel  Longford 
through  the  penitentiary  to  suicide. 

Yet  the  Colonel  was  not  upon  particularly  inti 
mate  terms  of  enmity  with  the  editor;  the  Colo 
nel's  dark  record  was  one  of  scores  to  which  the 
editor  of  the  Times-Globe  in  his  high  office  of 
guardian  of  the  public  morals  and  keeper  of  the 
town's  conscience  pointed  with  pride.  And  it  may 
be  worth  while  to  recall  that  in  the  open  season  for 
shooting  editors  —  as  for  instance  when  the  cam 
paign  for  the  location  of  the  courthouse  was  on, 
during  a  campaign  for  voting  railroad  bonds  or 
for  choosing  a  member  of  the  school  board  or 
the  council  —  the  Colonel  was  but  one  of  a  gallant 
company  who  availed  themselves  of  the  season's 
pleasant  privilege  and  took  pot  shots,  wing 
shots  and  trap  shots  at  the  editor.  So  the  long 
list  of  those  names  that  could  not  be  printed  in  the 
paper  grew  longer,  until  in  the  decade  following 
the  Civil  War  the  list  included  the  flower  of  the 
chivalry  of  New  Raynham.  And  as  many  of  the 
flowers  in  that  bouquet  were  merchants  whose  ad 
vertising  patronage  was  needed  by  the  sordid  de 
mands  of  a  pay  roll,  it  became  necessary  for  the 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  3 

editor  to  leave  his  citadel  and  find  another  watch- 
tower  of  public  virtue  in  another  town.  But  be 
fore  he  left  —  the  week  before  he  left  —  he 
printed  this  item : 

"  Born  to  Mrs.  Prudence  Cabot  Longford,  three 
hours  before  her  death,  a  baby  girl,  who  has  been 
named  Lalla  Rookh.  For  the  sake  of  the  moth 
erless  child  who  is  cast  into  worse  than  orphanage 
we  regret  that  the  sweet  and  patient  sufferings  of  a 
devoted  life  are  ended." 

When  the  black  box  was  opened  by  the  young 
schoolmaster  who  paid  seven  prices  for  the  Times- 
Globe,  the  damning  evidence  in  the  dark  archives 
was  found  to  be  chaff.  All  that  was  held  against 
the  Colonel  was  the  fact  that  he  deserted  an  Irish 
regiment  to  fight  on  the  Union  side  in  the  Civil 
War;  that  he  joined  the  Fenian  raid  on  Canada, 
and  that  he  took  a  contract  to  furnish  hay  to 
troops  in  Arizona  before  coming  to  New  Rayn- 
ham. 

As  a  dashing  young  Irish  colonel  of  a  coloured 
regiment  John  Longford  had  caught  and  held  the 
heart  of  a  Yankee  girl  near  Boston,  had  eloped 
with  her  to  Arizona  after  the  Fenian  raid,  and  the 
rest  we  knew.  He  had  no  particular  business  or 


4  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

calling,  and  was  just  coloneling  round  in  a  grand 
way  in  politics  and  in  real  estate  and  in  contracts 
to  supply  stone  or  meat  or  hay  or  railroad  rights- 
of-way,  wherever  he  could  find  employment  for  his 
talents  —  a  bull-necked,  bull-voiced,  bull-headed 
Irishman  with  a  mid-Victorian  education,  who 
loved  to  quote  Tom  Moore  and  Charles  Lever; 
drank  corn  whisky  to  flaunt  his  Democracy;  was 
not  over-nice  in  his  stories  or  his  accounts;  and  had 
the  documents  to  prove  that  he  was  a  true  de 
scendant  of  the  rightful  heir  to  the  Irish  throne. 
He  had  the  only  case  of  books  in  the  town  in  those 
halcyon  days  of  his  early  widowerhood,  when  he 
launched  out  with  a  coloured  mammy  for  his  house 
keeper,  and  walked  with  a  chip  on  his  shoulder  be 
fore  all  the  town's  widows  and  school-teachers, 
tempting  them  to  touch  him  if  they  dared. 

A  year  and  a  month  and  a  week  and  a  day  after 
the  funeral  of  the  late  Prudence  he  made  a  dashing 
social  sortie  into  the  shining  needles  of  the  enemy 
and  gave  a  party  — ••  and  escaped.  He  was  the 
very  devil  in  a  church  social,  and  aired  his  knowl 
edge  of  cookery  and  his  taste  in  literature  before 
the  available  women  as  one  who  loved  dangerous 
ice  for  its  own  smooth  sake.  When  his  little  girl 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  5 

was  seven  years  old  he  had  torn  down  his  old 
barns  and  built  him  new  ones,  and  in  his  house  was 
a  large  room  gaudy  with  Indian  blankets  and  tro 
phies  and  bestrewn  with  books.  The  books  were 
of  such  a  sadly  improper  character,  many  of  them, 
that  the  town  shook  its  head;  but  when  he  inau 
gurated  a  weekly  afternoon  tea  and  read  Locksley 
Hall  by  the  open  fire  in  the  twilight  the  town  could 
not  resist.  Now  Tennyson  done  into  Irish  after 
tea  is  a  tempter  that  few  women  could  withstand. 
Yet  the  Colonel  knew  too  much  about  cooking,  and 
after  reading  the  song  of  Maud  with  such  fire  in 
his  voice  as  fifty  full  fighting  years  could  fan  up  he 
would  sigh  to  the  assembled  company:  "  Ye  never 
can  tell  of  the  ways  of  the  heart;  and  if  I  could 
find  a  woman  who  had  never  parboiled  a  goose, 
nor  scalded  a  turkey  to  pick  him  — "  He  never 
finished  the  sentence,  but  wiped  a  tear  from  his  eye 
and  smiled  into  the  fire  as  he  sighed : 

"  And  my  heart  would  hear  her  and  beat, 
Though  I'd  lain  for  a  century  dead!  " 

But  even  that  could  not  tempt  them  to  touch  the 
chip  on  his  shoulder,  though  it  should  have  tempted 
a  woman  saint.  So  the  Colonel's  fifties  merged 


6  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

into  his  mellow  early  sixties  and  found  him  tall, 
burly,  shaggy,  merry-eyed  and  devilish,  with  more 
property  than  he  knew  exactly  what  to  do  with  and 
more  notes  outstanding  than  he  could  conveniently 
pay. 

And  Lalla  Rookh,  of  the  house  of  Longford, 
was  passing  from  twelve  to  twenty  before  his  puz 
zled  eyes.  The  little  girl  who  loved  to  coast  down 
the  boys'  hill  "  belly  buster  "  and  scorned  the  baby 
hill;  the  little  girl  who  had  learned  to  ride  as  she 
learned  to  walk;  who  had  learned  the  stern  virtue 
of  lying  from  her  coloured  mammy  and  the  refined 
art  of  it  from  her  father;  who  took  her  mother's 
Puritan  religion  as  a  dissipation  and  often  went 
on  spiritual  debauches  at  the  revivals  in  the  town, 
adventuring  with  God  until  her  little  soul  was  ex 
alted  beyond  human  endurance;  who  swarmed 
the  girls  of  her  hive  at  school  like  a  queen,  and 
led  them  into  the  library  for  forage  when  her 
father  was  away;  the  little  girl  who  could  always 
bat  her  father's  jokes  back  to  him,  was  passing 
in  some  mysterious  way  beyond  her  father's  ken. 
A  strange,  prim  young  person  was  coming  into 
her  face.  He  shook  his  head  and  sent  her  to 
a  convent,  and  she  ran  away  and  wrote  him  from 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  7 

a  boarding  school.  He  laughed,  made  a  note  at 
the  bank  for  her  year's  tuition  and  told  the  story 
in  the  town  as  a  sign  of  her  prowess. 

It  was  in  those  days  when  the  country  was  bump 
ing  along  over  rough  roads  at  high  pressure,  when 
men  grew  rich  over-night  and  poor  before  sunset, 
that  the  Colonel,  having  taken  what  he  wanted  in 
one  way  or  another,  had  retired  from  business  in 
the  fulness  of  years,  with  some  kind  of  a  vast  Irish 
dream  of  settling  up  his  affairs  and  becoming  a 
patriarch  for  the  town.  He  used  to  haunt  the 
newspaper  office  where  his  name  twenty  years  be 
fore  had  been  a  curse,  and  expound  the  meaning  of 
his  dream.  We  never  knew  what  it  was;  nor  did 
the  Colonel  know  exactly;  but  we  were  for  the 
Colonel's  scheme  and  wrote  more  or  less  about  it. 
Then  there  came  a  time  when  his  interest  in  the 
plan  slackened  and  we  found  out,  by  the  innumer 
able  lines  of  gossip  that  converge  in  every  news 
paper  office,  that  the  Colonel  was  worried  about 
his  daughter.  She  had  been  too  enthusiastic  for 
three  separate  boarding  schools,  so  she  came  home 
in  her  late  teens  very  much  of  a  young  woman, 
with  a  deeply  cleft  chin,  the  Colonel's  own  devilish 
chin,  which  he  had  hidden  all  the  years  with  whisk- 


8  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

ers ;  and  with  something  as  to  eyes  —  reddish 
brown,  a  match  for  the  Colonel's  wavy  hair  — 
something  as  to  eyes  deep  and  restless  and  so  in 
decently  candid  as  to  be  almost  openly  intriguing 
with  every  pair  of  eyes  they  met,  and  with  a 
figure  — 

"  My  heavens,  Madie !  "  said  the  little  flat- 
chested,  milk-eyed  society  editor  at  her  telephone 
to  the  inky-nosed  printer-girl  waiting  for  copy,  as 
Lalla  Longford  whirled  out.  "  Ain't  that  a  god 
dess  in  corsets  for  you !  " 

The  exit  of  Lalla  Rookh  was  always  as  dra 
matic  as  her  entrance.  Her  coming  and  going 
seemed  like  the  flashing  on  and  off  of  a  joyous 
flame,  and  when  she  left  the  newspaper  office  the 
society  editor  brushed  back  a  stray  lock  of  luster- 
less  hair  and  turned  to  her  typewriter,  saying : 

"  Wait  a  minute,  Madie;  I've  got  to  rewrite  this 
Longford  girl's  item." 

"  Mercy,  did  you  see  those  sleeves,  Elsie?  Are 
they  wearing  'em  that  big  now?  " 

But  the  society  editor  went  on  writing  and  talk 
ing  it  out  in  an  undertone  as  she  wrote :  '  He  — 
is  —  a  —  graduate  —  of  Evanston  University  — 
and  —  the  —  Medical  School ' — 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  9 

u  Say,  Madie,  this  is  her  fellow;  she  left  board 
ing  school  near  Chicago  to  be  with  him  — 

"  <  Of  —  Pennsylvania  '— 

"  And  she  went  to  boarding  school  near  Phila 
delphia  to  be  with  him;  they  say  it's  an  awful 
case."  Resuming  her  monotone : 

"  '  And  —  he  —  will  —  occupy  offices  in  —  the 
Borland  Building.  His  mother  —  Mrs.  Matilda 

—  Kurtlin  —  will  live  - — with  him  at  1127  Col 
lege  Heights  Avenue.     They  —  will  —  arrive  ' — 

'The  old  lady's  got  money,  they  say;  anyway 
she's  staying  by  the  boy.  They  say  he  is  only 
twenty-four  — 

1  Next  —  Tuesday  —  and  during  —  their  — 
first  —  few  days  —  in  New  Raynham  —  they  — 
will  —  be  the  —  guests  of  —  Colonel  Longford 

—  at  —  Longheath.'  " 

The  typist  slipped  the  sheet  out  of  the  machine 
and  jabbed  it  at  the  inky-nosed  person,  saying: 
"  Mark  that  <  Society.'  " 

As  the  stubby  printer-girl  waddled  out  the  so 
ciety  editor  called  shrilly:  "Charley!  Oh, 
Charley!" 

A  man  at  a  desk  in  the  front  office  looked  up. 
"  Make  a  note  on  your  calendar  that  a  young  fel- 


io  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

low  —  Lalla  Longford's  prize  package  named  Dr. 
Paul  Kurtlin  —  is  to  be  here  Tuesday  to  open  an 
office  in  the  Borland  Building,  and  go  get  his  pro 
fessional  card  for  the  paper  and  hit  him  for  some 
letterheads  and  envelopes." 

"  Got  you,"  answered  the  man  finally  as  he 
pushed  back  his  tablet;  then  he  asked:  "  When's 
it  going  to  be?  " 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know,"  called  back  the  girl  at  the 
telephone.  "  Maybe  never,  now  that  she's  good 
and  got  him.  She  was  that  way  as  a  little  girl." 

"  I'll  give  her  four  months ;  then  she'll  nab 
him,"  said  the  man  in  the  front  office.  No  reply 
came  from  the  society  editor's  room.  She  was 
rattling  away  at  her  machine.  As  she  came  out 
ten  minutes  later  the  man  in  the  business  office 
hailed  her:  "Elsie,  I  bet  you  an  oyster  stew 
Lalla  Rookh  has  him  nailed  down  and  married  be 
fore  snow  flies." 

"  You  made  a  bet!"  replied  the  girl  as  she 
slammed  the  door  on  her  way  into  the  composing 
room.  When  she  returned  she  said :  "Charley, 
I  don't  want  to  take  your  money ;  but  I  watched  her 
dancing  with  that  young  Prof  —  the  new  one  — 
Gregory  Nixon,  a  big,  handsome  brute  who  teaches 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  n 

physics  out  at  the  college  —  and  I'm  here  to  tell 
you  the  Doc's  got  competition!  My,  but  they 
made  a  couple !  And  after  he  danced  five  dances 
with  her  I  quit  counting  and  went  to  work." 

As  the  summer  deepened  the  battle  for  the  pos 
session  of  Lalla  Longford  opened  for  the  diver 
sion  of  the  whole  town.  A  town's  mind  is  a  child's 
mind.  It  cannot  see  the  foreshadowing  of  a  trag 
edy  for  what  it  is.  The  town's  mind  saw  only  the 
comedy  of  it.  The  town  smiled  and  sometimes 
even  laughed.  But  those  were  serious  days  for 
three  young  people  grappling  with  the  most  vital 
problem  in  youth.  The  slight,  blue-eyed  doctor, 
with  his  sympathetic  face,  with  his  high  forehead 
full  of  dreams  and  his  heart  shining  through  his 
troubled  countenance,  seemed  only  a  boy,  dis 
traught  and  worried,  as  he  went  about  his  little 
practice  that  summer.  For  Dr.  Paul  Kurtlin 
realised,  even  before  he  had  seen  Nixon,  that  dan 
ger  was  in  the  air.  The  Doctor  had  the  nine 
points  of  the  law  that  come  with  possession.  She 
still  wore  his  ring.  But  the  tall,  heavy,  quiet,  ef 
fective,  easy-going,  slow-speaking,  gentle-handed, 
patient  college  man,  older  than  the  doctor,  plodded 
along,  accepting  the  handicap  of  the  ring  good- 


12  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

naturedly  but  not  seriously.  And  because  the  Pro 
fessor  was  persistent  in  his  love-making  the  Doc 
tor  could  feel  the  quake  of  the  ground  under  him. 
As  for  the  girl  — 

"  Ah,  Archimedes !  "  smiled  the  Colonel  one 
summer  evening  as  he  tilted  his  chair  back  in  front 
of  the  printing  office  and  talked  to  the  schoolmas 
ter,  grown  into  his  forties,  who  for  a  score  of  years 
had  been  handling  the  lever  that  moved  the  world 
of  New  Raynham.  "  Archimedes,  my  boy,  'tis  a 
queer  world  ye  hooked  your  lever  to,  a  damned 
queer  world,  and  the  fun  of  it  is  we  have  to  lie  so 
much  to  keep  it  going.  There's  poor  little  Lally 
Rookh,  eatin'  the  heart  out  of  her;  fer  that  she 
loves  'em  both,  the  polygamous  little  haythen! 
She  loves  'em  both  and  wants  'em  both,  and  could 
love  another  and  more  if  so  be  the  case.  But  be 
cause  society  holds  her  to  one  she's  tearin'  her 
heart  out  decidin'  a  most  unnatural  question !  " 

The  Colonel  thumbed  his  vest-holes  and  looked 
at  the  twinkling  September  stars,  and  smiled  and 
nodded  whimsically  as  though  to  an  old  friend. 
"  And  don't  ye  know  it's  the  truth,  Prudey,  by  this 
time,  that  I  was  a  born  polygamist?  But  for  the 
way  you  had  of  devilin'  kidneys  and  pannin'  a  rab- 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  13 

bit  and  roastin'  a  goose  I'd  'a'  been  philanderin' 
far  and  wide,  Prudey,  and  well  ye  know  it  now,  my 
poor  gel  —  well  ye  know  it  now !  "  The  Colonel 
sighed  and  snapped  his  suspenders  with  his  thumbs, 
and  continued:  "  And  then  Lally  Rookh,  Archi 
medes,  poor  Lally  Rookh,  she's  her  father's 
daughter  by  marriage,  and  blood  kin  to  the  chained 
Turk  who  sits  in  the  back  of  my  head,  gnawing 
his  chains  and  thanking  God  for  the  safety  and  the 
comfort  they  bring  him." 

The  reply  of  Archimedes  is  unimportant  except 
that  it  prompted  these  words  from  the  Colonel: 
"  It's  the  young  Doctor  I'm  really  sorry  for,  if 
ye  must  know  the  truth.  Haven't  I  tramped  the 
cobblestones  of  Dublin,  across  the  bridge  and  down 
the  quay,  and  up  the  quay  and  over  the  bridge,  all 
of  a  winter's  night,  with  the  vultures  of  shame  and 
hate  and  —  saints  forgive  me !  —  murder  rippin' 
my  heart  to  shreds  on  the  weddin'  night  of  Kate 
McGarrity,  dead  these  thirty  years.  Ah,  my  little 
man,  my  game  little  doctor  man,  ye'll  be  salvin'  a 
blister  on  your  poor  soul  the  long  score  of  years 
till  you're  passin'  forty!  And  I'm  wonderin' 
now  " —  and  the  Colonel  gazed  wistfully  at  the 
stars  as  he  spoke  — "  if  Prudey  and  Kate  will  be 


14  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

meetin'  betimes  and  havin'  a  bit  of  a  tear  and  a 
smile  in  their  tea  in  the  Milky  Way  yonder  as  they 
talk  me  over!  " 

The  autumn  sank  into  winter,  and  still  the  town 
smiled  at  the  battle  for  Lalla  Longford.  We 
Americans  make  a  pretence  of  civilisation  that 
keeps  us  from  claws  and  fists  and  knives  and  guns 
in  the  struggles  for  our  mates.  But  the  fierceness 
of  the  fight  is  prolonged  only  because  it  has  no 
climax,  no  expression  in  terms  of  blood  and  muscle. 
How  the  town  could  laugh  at  the  tense,  strained 
face  of  the  Doctor,  or  the  lowering  animal  wrath 
that  loomed  big  in  his  slow-moving,  dogged  rival, 
is  only  explicable  on  the  theory  that  it  is  always 
funny  to  see  a  man  act  the  beast,  or  a  beast  try 
to  act  the  man.  But  our  sense  of  humour  blinds 
our  eyes  to  the  tragedy  that  inheres  in  every  yield 
ing  of  the  man  to  the  beast,  or  aspiration  of  the 
beast  toward  man. 

The  quarrel  that  Nixon  knew  he  would  force 
between  the  Doctor  and  the  girl  came  in  January. 
The  Doctor  sent  for  his  ring  and  got  it;  but  he  did 
not  know  that  she  sent  it  covered  with  kisses  of  re 
morse.  Then  the  Colonel  took  her  away  to  the 
city  for  a  week  of  grand  opera,  and  Wagner  har- 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  15 

rowed  her  heart.  So  she  wrote  passionate  letters 
to  both  her  lovers,  and  the  big  man  came  to  the 
city  and  got  her. 

The  boy  who  brought  the  telegraphic  press  re 
port  one  Saturday  afternoon  came  stumbling  along, 
reading  the  sheet.  He  handed  it  to  the  society 
editor,  who  met  him  in  the  corridor,  and  she  cried 
to  the  man  in  the  business  office:  "I  win!  I 
win!  They've  eloped  to  New  York!  " 

The  office  force  came  crowding  round  to  read 
the  despatch,  and  there  it  was,  in  plain  typewritten 
characters  —  the  story  of  Lalla  Rookh  and  the 
Professor,  and  the  Colonel  chasing  them  furiously 
to  the  station  in  a  cab  and  then  throwing  kisses 
after  them  as  they  stood  on  the  rear  of  the  depart 
ing  train. 

When  they  had  all  gone  out  of  her  room  the  so 
ciety  editor  called:  "  Charley,  come  here!" 
And  when  Charley  came  she  shut  the  door  and 
whispered:  "  And  not  five  minutes  ago,  as  I  was 
in  the  post-office  for  the  afternoon  mail,  I  met  Doc 
tor  Kurtlin  —  his  box  is  right  above  ours  —  and 
Charley,  if  that  girl  hadn't  written  him  a  letter 
—  written  Doctor  a  letter  that  he  got  just  now. 
My  land,  Charley  —  what  —  do  —  you  —  think 


1 6  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

—  of  that !  Why,  it  must  have  been  just  before 
she  left  with  Nixon.  I  saw  it  drop  from  his  box, 
address  up ;  it's  her  big  box-car  handwriting,  and 
it  wasn't  a  little  old  ta-ta  or  by-by;  it  was  a  big  fat 
letter!" 

Then  in  a  pause  her  newspaper  sense  came  to 
her,  and  she  hurried  to  a  door  and  called :  "  Her 
man,  Doctor  Kurtlin  got  a  letter  a  minute  ago 
from  Lalla  Rookh.  You  send  one  of  the  boys 
over  to  his  office  and  maybe  he'll  talk  —  send 
Jim ;  he  can  fight  if  he  has  to !  "  The  girl  came 
back  to  her  desk  by  the  telephone  and  sat  looking 
at  the  advertising  solicitor.  "  Charley,"  she  said, 
"listen  to  me:  If  that  girl  lives  to  be  thirty, 
she's  going  to  make  a  big  first-page,  black-head, 
three-decked  story  for  this  paper.  She  is  full  of 
the  kind  of  dynamite  that  makes  news !  " 

'  Well,  don't  you  go  telling  Archimedes  your 
dreams,  Elsie,"  answered  the  solicitor;  "  he's  that 
soft  on  the  Colonel  he'll  order  the  story  killed  five 
years  in  advance  and  cut  down  to-day's  story  to  a 
society  item  on  the  third  page !  "  And  with  that 
they  fell  to  their  work. 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  17 

PART  II 

But  alas  for  the  futility  of  prophecy !  The  only 
copy  Mrs.  Lalla  Rookh  Nixon  made  during  the 
first  five  years  of  her  married  life  was  birth  notices ! 
Three  notices  appeared  in  fairly  regular  succes 
sion,  and  the  last  notice  chronicled  twins.  Then 
news  of  that  character  conspicuously  quit  coming 
from  Longheath,  where  the  happy  couple  had  set 
tled  down  with  the  Colonel.  The  phrase  "  settled 
down  "  perhaps  may  apply  to  Gregory  Nixon,  who 
settled  down  to  a  steady  brilliancy  of  work  in  his 
profession;  the  phrase  may  even  have  applied  to 
the  Colonel,  who  was  enjoying  to  the  full  the  long 
afternoon  of  his  vigorous  life,  as  one  on  a  quiet 
perennial  spree  who  lives  in  fear  of  the  return  of 
somber  sobriety;  but  "settled  down "  was  no 
phrase  to  use  on  Lalla  Rookh.  The  current  of 
life  was  strong  in  her.  But  after  the  birth  of  the 
twins  she  seemed  to  tire  of  the  game  of  domes 
ticity.  Almost  with  a  click  or  bang  or  whack  she 
slammed  the  door  on  the  picture  she  had  been 
making  of  herself  as  she  appeared  in  public  with 
her  children,  rather  over-dressed  and  bedizened, 
grouped  beautifully  round  her.  Then  she  opened 


1 8  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

another  door  as  impetuously  as  she  had  shut  the 
last  one,  and  Elsie  Barnes  at  the  Globe  office  be 
gan  getting  two  kinds  of  items  from  Longheath. 
One  set  of  items  was  always  written  in  Mrs. 
Nixon's  box-car  chirography,  setting  forth  the 
achievements  of  the  Professor  in  the  line  of  pure 
physics.  Her  chronicles  told  us  what  we  knew  in 
the  office,  that  his  papers  delivered  before  learned 
societies  were  being  translated  into  many  foreign 
languages  and  that  he  was  becoming  an  interna 
tional  figure  in  his  profession.  The  items  told  us 
also  of  important  offers  he  received  from  great 
Eastern  universities  to  take  chairs  or  departments 
in  his  line  of  work,  which  he  always  refused.  We 
knew  why.  It  was  because  his  salary  at  the  col 
lege  was  large  enough  to  live  on,  and  because  he 
had  practically  ceased  to  teach  and  was  devoting 
his  time  to  research  work.  Also  the  Colonel  loved 
the  babies,  but  he  would  not  leave  New  Raynham, 
and  Lalla  Rookh  would  not  leave  him,  and  the 
Professor  would  not  leave  Lalla  Rookh,  so  pure 
science  throve  in  our  little  college  and  all  the  world 
made  a  path  to  the  Professor's  door.  The  second 
type  of  news  that  we  had  from  the  Nixons  con 
cerned  the  activities  of  Mrs.  Nixon.  She  had  as- 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  19 

sumed  a  distinctive  kind  of  social  leadership  in  the 
town.  Let  the  divine  Elsie  with  her  troubled  hair 
and  her  baked-potato  complexion  describe  it: 

"  Now,  Madie,  wait  till  I  give  you  this  chunk 
of  copy  the  Nixon  woman  has  sent  down  here. 
She  can't  spell  for  sour  apples,  but  she  does  man 
age  to  turn  in  the  news.  It's  the  list  for  to-day 
of  the  contributors  to  the  flood  sufferers  in  Ohio. 
Honest,  Madie,  I'd  think  the  merchants  would 
hate  to  see  that  woman  come  bursting  into  the 
stores  —  she  never  comes  without  a  subscription 
paper.  And  she's  always  wringing  money  out  of 
'em  for  something  —  floods  and  earthquakes  and 
doors  of  hope  and  provident  associations  and  home 
guards  and  the  old  brass  band  and  the  North  End 
Mission  and  the  rescue  work  and  the  anti-saloon 
league  —  heavens  to  Betsy !  And  say,  Madie,  did 
you  know  she  snatched  that  little  tough  hussy  of  a 
Snay  girl  as  a  brand  from  the  burning  and 
has  her  at  Longheath  a-makin'  baskets?  —  and 
Mrs.  Nixon  goes  round  selling  'em  —  literally 
choking  baskets  down  people's  throats.  That's 
the  third  little  ash-cat  she's  picked  up  this  year." 
Elsie  rattled  away  as  she  corrected  the  copy,  and 
when  the  printer  girl  had  gone  she  called: 


20  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

"Charley!  Oh,  Charley!  Come  here.  I  got 
something  to  tell  you." 

When  Charley  appeared  with  his  paste  brush 
in  hand :  "  What  do  you  think  —  the  Nixons  had 
Dr.  Paul  Kurtlin  out  to  dinner  last  night  to  meet 
that  Frenchman !  She  handed  the  Doctor's  name 
in  with  the  dinner  guests."  Elsie  blinked  malevo 
lently,  and  Charley  prodded  her:  "  Go  on,  you 
rattlesnake,  say  it!  " 

"  Well,  /  think,"  returned  the  girl,  busying  her 
self  with  the  copy  on  her  desk — "I  think,  Mr. 
Charley,  that  she's  going  to  break  up  that  little 
budding  affair  between  the  Doctor  and  the  Ellis 
girl  —  that's  what  I  think,  if  you  must  know !  " 

"  Ah,  Elsie,  you're  such  a  — "  He  did  not  fin 
ish  his  sentence,  for  the  door  opened  suddenly  and 
the  man,  looking  round,  gazed  into  the  pink-and- 
white  features  of  Mrs.  Lalla  Rookh  Nixon.  He 
faded  into  the  next  room  without  a  word. 

"  Well,  Elsie,  if  it  isn't  too  late  here's  another 
hundred  dollars  I've  got  for  the  flood  sufferers.  I 
hope  you  can  get  it  in  the  paper  this  evening." 

She  spoke  in  the  gentlest  tones,  and  put  her 
strong  hand  in  a  caressing  habit  she  had  on  the 
girl's  shoulder.  The  girl  at  the  desk  looked  up 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  21 

at  the  tall,  gorgeous  creature  scrupulously,  even 
painfully,  tailored  from  toe  to  chin,  with  the  frank 
yet  intriguing  eyes,  and  the  splendid  head  of  flam 
ing  copper-coloured  hair;  and  the  rattlesnake  blink 
went  out  of  Elsie's  eyes.  She  touched  the  fond 
ling  hand  and  said:  "  Why,  of  course  I  can  get 
it  in,"  and  taking  the  paper  and  dabbing  it  here  and 
there  with  a  pencil  to  make  it  conform  to  some  of 
fice  style,  she  hurried  out  to  the  composing  room. 
When  Elsie  came  back  she  found  her  visitor  still 
standing  by  the  desk.  Mrs.  Nixon  touched  her 
arm  again  with  caressing  fingers  and  said: 

"  Now,  my  dear,  I  want  you  to  do  two  things 
for  me.  First,  I  want  you  to  assemble  your  Ply 
mouth  Daughters  next  month  and  give  a  fair  and 
sell  a  lot  of  the  dearest  baskets  that  Maudie  Snay 
is  making;  and  —  now  don't  you  flinch  —  I  wish 
to  arrange  for  Maudie  herself  to  come  down  and 
take  a  booth.  It  will  give  her  self-respect,  and 
you  know  psychologists  tell  us  self-respect  is  the 
foundation  of  will  power,  and  that's  the  thing  she 
most  needs  at  present.  Now  you  girls  certainly 
can  contribute  that  mite  of  sacrifice  to  the  cause 
of  charity.  And  I'll  stand  near  Maudie  and  see 
that  she  doesn't  interfere  with  your  boys." 


22  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

She  paused  and  smiled,  then  added:  "  Oh,  El 
sie,  Elsie,  if  you  only  knew  how  sweet  the  life  of 
service  really  is."  She  had  her  arm  round  the 
girl's  bony  waist  and  hugged  her  a  little.  "  Now, 
Doctor  Paul" — she  hesitated  half  coyly  after 
the  name  and  then  repeated:  "  Doctor  Kurtlin 
promised  me  last  night  he'd  solicit  all  the  doctors 
in  the  Argyle  Building  for  my  flood  sufferers,  and 
he  must  have  two  or  three  hundred  dollars." 
Again  she  stopped  as  for  a  longer  jump  than  she 
had  made  and  flushed  prettily  as  she  spoke : 

"  I  don't  want  to  go  to  his  office."  The  tone 
of  her  voice  grew  a  little  shrill  and  tense  as  she 
said:  "Elsie,  dearest,  won't  you  run  up  there 
and  get  that  list  and  tell  him  I'm  down  here  wait 
ing  for  you?"  The  reporter  blinked  at  Mrs. 
Nixon  a  moment  as  she  wondered  what  pose  of 
modesty  was  back  of  the  woman's  hesitancy  about 
going  to  the  Doctor's  office.  But  Elsie  put  on  her 
hat  and  was  gone  in  a  moment.  Dr.  Paul  Kurtlin 
returned  with  her,  and  she  saw  the  over-candid 
eyes  of  the  woman  meet  the  man's  eager  gaze,  and 
then  droop  a  little  —  a  calculated  little  —  and 
their  hands  met  for  an  instant,  perhaps  two  in- 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  23 

stants,  before  they  fell  to  the  work  of  inspecting 
the  Doctor's  paper. 

All  the  time  Elsie,  bending  over  her  machine, 
hammering  away  at  her  copy,  was  watching  from 
the  sharp  corners  of  her  dull  gray  eyes  the  femi 
nine  craft  of  Mrs.  Nixon  —  the  glancing  touch  of 
a  finger  to  a  wrist;  the  brush  of  her  body  against 
the  man's  arm;  the  mingling  of  her  breath  with 
the  man's  as  they  bent  over  the  paper;  the  devil 
ish  poison  in  the  reddish-brown  eyes  as  they  flicked 
the  Doctor's  flushed  face,  and  over  all  this  an  ob 
vious  veil  of  kittenish  innocence  that  made  the  re 
porter's  gorge  rise.  She  felt  she  had  to  keep  the 
machine  going,  but  she  could  write  only,  "  Now  is 
the  time  for  all  good  men  and  true  to  come  to  the 
aid  of  the  party,"  over  and  over,  and  she  brushed 
back  her  straggling  hair  betimes  and  set  her  teeth 
by  time  lock.  And  Lalla  Rookh  smiled  at  the  re 
porter  through  it  all  as  blandly  as  though  she  did 
not  know  that  Elsie  knew  what  was  occurring. 
And  what  made  Elsie's  teeth  ache  as  she  ground 
them  was  the  knowledge  that  as  soon  as  the  man 
was  gone  the  beautiful  creature  who  had  herself 
so  well  in  hand  would  begin  making  love  to  Elsie 


24  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

to  make  her  doubt  the  evidence  of  her  own  eyes 
and  ears. 

As  he  was  leaving  the  room  Mrs.  Nixon  said: 
"  Here's  a  receipt  I've  made  out  as  chairman  of 
the  committee,  Paul.  You  just  fill  in  the  total." 
She  handed  him  a  folded  paper,  and  as  he  went 
Mrs.  Nixon  was  saying:  "  Now,  Elsie,  that 
poor  Snay  child  never  has  had  a  show  —  a 
drunken  father  and  a  mother  washing  out  by  the 
day  and  the  children  growing  up  in  the  street. 
Oh,  Elsie,  Elsie,  I  never  see  one  of  her  kind  nor 
any  of  the  poor  girls  down  in  Jimtown  that  I  don't 
say  to  myself:  '  There  you  go,  Lalla  Longford, 
if  the  good  God  hadn't  shielded  you.'  Don't  be 
narrow,  Elsie,  because  you  haven't  had  to  fight 
with  that  particular  devil;  your  own  devils  are 
probably  just  as  bad  of  their  kind."  Her  hand, 
soft  and  yet  strong,  but  white  and  well  kept, 
touched  with  a  caressing  pat  the  bony,  brown-red 
hand  of  the  reporter.  The  girl  felt  an  extra 
squeeze,  and  the  woman  was  gone.  Elsie  sat  at 
her  desk  and  tore  off  the  scribbled  sheet  of  rough 
copy  paper  on  top  of  her  pad.  Under  it  she  no 
ticed  a  sheet  had  been  torn  out,  and  on  the  soft 
white  paper  before  her  she  traced  in  shadowy  out- 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  25 

line  where  the  hard  pencil  had  written  the  words  on 
the  extracted  sheet:  "  My  dear,  dear  Paul,"  and 
then  a  few  half-legible  but  meaningless  lines,  clos 
ing  with  " ing  Lalla."  The  girl  tore  out  the 

embossed  sheet,  wadded  it  up  and  threw  it  into  the 
basket.  Then  she  reached  for  it,  tore  it  up  and 
chewed  it  up,  and  carried  it  with  her  when  she  went 
to  the  stove  in  the  back  room. 

It  was  nearly  a  year  afterward,  when  the  young 
est  little  Nixons  were  three  years  old,  that  the 
town  began  to  realise  that  Dr.  Paul  Kurtlin  spent 
more  time  than  was  necessary  with  the  Nixons; 
not  with  Mrs.  Nixon  particularly  but  with  all  the 
Nixons,  including  the  Colonel.  Always  the  Doc 
tor  was  around  for  Sunday  dinner;  always  he 
made  a  place  at  table  when  notables  were  to  be 
entertained.  When  the  Nixons  drove  he  rode 
behind  the  family  horse,  sometimes  with  the  Pro 
fessor,  sometimes  with  Mrs.  Nixon,  sometimes 
with  the  Colonel,  but  never  with  the  children. 
For  they  were  not  taken  on  these  family  drives. 

The  children  were  at  that  time  wandering  about 
the  universe  like  four  disengaged  moons,  in  charge 
of  a  white-capped  nurse.  They  were  more  or  less 
out  of  school,  more  or  less  down  with  something 


26  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

catching,  when  Lalla  Rookh  was  attending  grand 
opera  and  living  what  she  called  "  my  own  life  in 
my  own  way  " ;  and  what  with  short  socks  and 
hygienic  underwear  and  bare  red  knees  in  the  win 
ter,  when  other  children  of  New  Raynham  wore 
long  flannels  and  overshoes,  and  what  with  an 
ever-varying  scientific  diet  to  reduce  their  rising 
tendency  to  fratricide,  they  were  beginning  to  be 
a  sensitive  point  between  Mrs.  Nixon  and  her 
friends. 

It  was  at  a  committee  meeting  of  the  Children's 
Home  Society,  of  which  organisation  Mrs.  Nixon 
was  for  the  moment  president  and  moving  spirit, 
that  she  burst  out  in  answer  to  a  covert  scratch  of 
one  of  the  women  on  the  committee :  "  Now, 
Jane,  you  run  your  children  and  I'll  run  mine.  Go 
ahead  and  slave  for  them  if  you  want  to.  I  won't. 
I  get  the  best  nurse  that  money  will  buy,  and  she 
knows  twice  as  much  about  the  children  as  I  do. 
She's  a  graduate  nurse  and  better  than  half  the 
doctors,  and  she's  teaching  them  French  and  Ger 
man  as  they  grow  up  and  she  loves  all  four  of 
them  fondly." 

The  great  frank  eyes  swept  the  circle  and  the 
cheeks  reddened  and  dimpled  as  she  smiled: 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  27 

"  Now,  girls,  I'm  going  to  shock  you  to  death. 
Listen:  You  are  all  pretending,  faking,  just  po 
litely  lying,  because  you  think  it's  proper  to,  when 
you  talk  about  mother  love.  There  is  no  such 
thing.  I  love  my  children  as  much  as  any  of  you, 
but  I  don't  love  them  at  all  because  they're  my 
children.  I  could  take  any  other  four  that  were 
just  as  good  as  mine  and  love  them  just  as  much." 

When  the  committee  had  quit  gasping  Lalla 
Rookh  went  on:  "  NOW,  girls,  don't  you  go  and 
say  I  don't  love  my  children,  for  I  do ;  but  it's  be 
cause  they  are  good  little  things,  and  nice,  and 
clean,  and  not  sticky  and  dirty  and  messy,  and  be 
cause  the  nurse  keeps  them  well-bred  and  teaches 
them  good  manners." 

When  that  story  got  out  and  over  the  town 
legend  declared  that  Lalla  Longford  would  be  per 
fectly  willing  to  eat  her  children  raw  if  she  were 
hungry,  and  the  comments  on  the  strange  relations 
of  the  Nixons  to  Doctor  Kurtlin  grew  more  and 
more  acrid  in  their  nature.  The  Professor  had  a 
laboratory  at  one  end  of  the  long  two-storied  brick 
edifice  that  was  Longheath,  and  he  often  spent  his 
evenings  in  the  laboratory  or  with  the  children. 
Sometimes  Doctor  Kurtlin  sat  with  Mrs.  Nixon; 


28  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

sometimes  the  Colonel  sat  with  her;  and  some 
times  the  Colonel  and  his  daughter  and  the  Doctor 
went  to  the  theater  together,  or  appeared  at  the 
few  social  gatherings  that  the  Nixons  patronised. 
For  Lalla  Rookh  was  not  bitten  by  the  social  bug. 
Most  of  the  joy  of  social  climbing  is  in  climbing, 
not  in  arriving;  and  in  New  Raynham,  Lalla 
Rookh  was  born  in  the  social  sanctuary.  So  she 
was  intensely  democratic,  loathed  snobbery,  and 
went  in,  not  for  bridge  and  teas  but  for  committee 
work  in  the  City  Federation  of  Women's  Clubs, 
for  the  afternoons  of  the  music  club  and  for  din 
ners  —  chiefly  her  own  dinners,  for  that  matter  — 
where  the  talk  often  ranged  upon  subjects  which 
the  Colonel,  with  his  Victorian  ideals,  regarded  as 
a  shade  too  frank  even  for  his  liberal  standards. 
So  when  gossip  began  to  buzz  about  Mrs.  Nixon 
society  could  not  reach  her.  She  did  not  ask  to  be 
chairman  of  any  committee;  all  she  asked  was  to 
do  the  committee's  work,  and  any  committee  will 
surrender  that  right  to  any  one,  even  though  the 
lady  to  whom  the  surrender  is  made  does  spend 
rather  more  time  than  is  required  in  the  company 
of  a  former  lover.  She  did  not  seek  for  a  place 
on  the  programme  of  the  music  club;  she  asked 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  ,29 

only  to  make  the  programmes,  to  see  that  the  in 
vited  performers  came,  and  to  pay  the  bills  from 
her  own  pocket. 

As  for  her  dinners  —  well,  it  was  at  her  dinners 
that  all  the  vital  energy  that  moved  the  soul  of 
Lalla  Rookh  came  out  to  walk  the  earth.  At  her 
dinners  she  dared  —  dared  in  her  cooking  to  do 
those  glorious  things  which  other  women  read  of 
and  dreamed  of  and  fancied  might  be  royal;  dared 
in  her  talk  to  say  all  that  lay  behind  those  candid, 
fearless  eyes;  dared  in  her  guests  to  twist  social 
lines  and  rub  the  insolent  democracy  of  the  aris 
tocrat  under  the  noses  of  the  socially  squeamish. 
But  most  of  all  she  dared  in  her  clothes.  No 
one  would  imagine  that  the  tautly  tailored  per 
son,  sailing  like  a  trim  schooner  down  Consti 
tution  Street  by  day,  could  strip  for  action 
like  a  battleship  by  night  and  show  where  every 
ounce  was  of  the  hundred  and  sixty  pounds  ton 
nage  she  carried  —  and  show  it  a  great  glis 
tening  jewel  of  life,  as  much  vitalised  on  her  arms 
and  broad,  dimpled  back  as  in  her  face,  which 
changed  every  moment  as  the  winds  of  feeling 
played  through  the  wide-open  windows  of  her 
heart.  Indeed,  as  for  her  dinners,  there  Lalla 


30  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

Rookh  queened,  even  as  the  Colonel  before  her 
had  colonelled  his  way  to  such  success  as  his  soul 
craved.  So,  in  spite  of  the  salient  irregularity  of 
the  thin-visaged,  steel-fingered,  probe-eyed  Doc 
tor's  position  in  the  Nixon  household,  there  were 
never  too  many  plates  for  the  guests  at  Mrs. 
Nixon's  dinners,  and  Lalla  Rookh  snapped  her 
fingers  at  the  town,  and  the  town  replied  as  one 
woman:  "Well,  how  does  the  Professor  stand 
it?" 

To  which  query  the  Professor  might  well  have 
put  another:  "  Stand  what?  "  And  that  would 
have  been  a  poser;  for,  whatever  the  relations 
were  between  Mrs.  Nixon  and  the  Doctor,  they 
were  not  evidenced  by  a  single  episode  or  incident 
which  the  town  could  question.  But  the  town 
might  reply:  UA  man  does  not  spend  all  his 
spare  time  with  a  woman,  particularly  a  woman  to 
whom  he  has  been  engaged,  and  by  whom  he  was 
madly  and  impulsively  jilted,  unless  — "  "  Well, 
unless  what?  "  might  the  devil's  advocate  make  an 
swer,  and  all  the  town  could  have  done  would  have 
been  to  wag  its  head  and  grumble :  "  Well,  any 
way  — "  and  let  it  go  at  that. 

And  yet  at  the  bookstore  there  was  evidence 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  31 

that  the  Doctor  was  ordering  all  the  books  he 
could  find  that  told  of  the  loves  of  Dante  and 
Beatrice,  of  Petrarch  and  Laura,  of  Pelleas  and 
Melisande  and  of  all  the  other  affairs  of  unre 
quited  affection  of  which  he  had  ever  heard. 
Whatever  Lalla  Rookh's  theory  of  the  situation 
was,  it  was  certain  that  the  Doctor  was  taking 
it  with  dreadful  seriousness.  And  his  seriousness 
affected  him  with  a  kind  of  an  obsession  of  gentle 
ness  and  consideration  for  everyone.  He  visited 
upon  the  poor  a  very  passion  of  tenderness,  and  en 
tered  into  their  lives  with  a  fraternity  of  spirit 
that  made  them  his  champions.  Perhaps  his  work 
among  the  poor  was  in  the  hope  of  feeling  her 
approval;  perhaps  it  was  because  love  begets  love. 
No  one  knew  and  few  asked.  For  in  such  cases 
the  public  mind  finds  it  easier  to  scoff  than  to  specu 
late  about  eccentricities  that  are  by-products  of  a 
three-cornered  love  affair. 

As  for  the  big,  preoccupied  man  with  the  deep, 
quiet  voice  who  was  Lalla  Rookh's  husband,  the 
town  had  a  divided  opinion.  Two  things  were 
said  of  him  —  that  he  was  too  busy  to  care  what 
was  going  on;  and  that  he  was  biding  his  time. 
And  neither  saying  was  true. 


32  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

For  the  truth  is  that  Lalla  Rookh  fooled  her 
husband,  after  the  old,  old  fashion  of  the  woman 
whose  husband  is  away  on  a  long  journey;  for  the 
Professor  always  was  away  on  a  long  journey  into 
the  innermost  core  of  matter.  Yet  though  she 
fooled  him  —  such  is  the  sad  inconsistency  of  her 
type  of  mind  —  she  loved  him.  He  was  the 
shadow  of  a  great  rock  in  a  weary  land  for  her, 
the  land  of  vain  pretences  and  subtle  intriguing, 
the  land  of  exciting  adventures  all  in  the  humdrum 
of  the  day's  routine  work,  the  land  of  compli 
cated  motives  and  tangled  desires,  a  waste  land 
wherein  she  descended  slopes  and  ran  breathless 
back  up  steeps  to  safety  —  ran  panting  lest  she 
should  fall  into  the  pit,  and  insanely  hoping  she 
might  fall;  a  land  of  stolen  waters  that  corroded 
her  soul  and  of  bitter  desert  fruit  that  choked  her 
life;  a  weary  land  of  mirages,  where  she  walked 
she  knew  not  why,  save  that  she  had  a  wandering 
foot.  And  Gregory  Nixon  was  the  shadow  of  a 
great  rock  where  she  rested  and  was  happy. 

Probably  it  was  under  the  shadow  of  that  rock 
that  Mrs.  Nixon  went  forth  as  ministering  angel 
in  her  various  public  activities.  For  certainly  that 
part  of  her  life  was  effective.  Even  though  occa- 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  33 

sionally  as  she  flitted  from  cause  to  cause,  walking 
among  the  poor,  going  in  and  out  of  the  stores 
and  offices  of  the  town  begging  for  money  for  a 
wide  variety  of  charities,  she  met  the  Doctor,  and 
enjoyed  miserably  with  him  one  of  those  brief  pub 
lic  trysts  which  left  her  disheveled  in  mind  and 
heart  —  even  then  she  enjoyed  keenly  the  satis 
faction  of  helping  the  needy  at  no  particular  cost 
to  herself,  save  that  of  time  and  money,  both  of 
which  she  had  in  abundance. 

The  town  wagged  a  sad  head  and  gave  her  up. 
Whether  she  realised  how  publicly  posted  her 
story  was  one  cannot  say.  Perhaps  even  if  she 
had  known  how  well  her  neighbours  were  reading 
it  she  would  have  gone  into  the  anti-saloon  fight 
merely  to  crucify  herself  and  prove  to  herself  that 
she  was  not  letting  her  daily  excursions  among  the 
mirages  in  the  weary  land  make  a  coward  of  her. 
Or  probably  she  went  as  a  fool  blinded  by  her 
folly.  But  she  did  go  into  the  fight  for  a  dry 
town,  and  she  went  with  all  the  enthusiasm  of  an 
ardent  nature. 

Now,  ladies  and  gentlemen  in  the  saloon  busi 
ness  and  its  allied  trades,  fighting  for  their  lives, 
have  not  those  nice,  chivalric  scruples  that  Sir 


34  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

Launcelot  practised  in  seeking  the  Holy  Grail. 
They  use  whatever  weapon  the  devil  puts  in  their 
hands,  and  they  endured  Lalla  Rookh  up  to  a 
point;  but  when  she  began  to  be  effective  they  let 
fly.  Whereupon  the  air  grew  first  purple  and  then 
red  with  stories,  highly  apocryphal  and  gorgeously 
false,  yet  all  based  on  the  fundamental  and  un 
disputed  fact  that  Mrs.  Nixon  and  Doctor  Kurtlin 
were  engaged  in  some  kind  of  love  affair  that  had 
no  legal  right  to  exist. 

It  was  only  after  Archimedes,  who  handles  the 
lever  that  moves  the  world  of  the  town,  had  re 
fused  to  print  the  Personal  Liberty  League  circu 
lar,  and  indeed  only  after  the  League  had  taken  it 
to  a  job-printing  office  and  had  it  made  into  a 
handbill,  that  it  seemed  wise  for  Elsie  of  the  flat 
chest  and  rope  hair  and  saddle  complexion  to  act. 
It  was  dusk  and  the  office  was  deserted  when  Mrs. 
Nixon  came  glowing  into  the  dingy  room  where 
the  typewriter  and  the  telephone  ran  the  social 
news  of  New  Raynham  through  Elsie  as  a  sort  of 
human  transformer,  from  the  high  voltage  of 
truth  to  the  low  voltage  of  such  sparkling  facts  as 
she  dared  put  on  her  humble  society  page.  In  the 
room  Mrs.  Nixon  found  Elsie,  and  the  girl  blinked 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  35 

for  a  moment  at  Mrs.  Nixon  before  reaching  in 
her  desk  and  bringing  out  the  printed  circular. 

"  Sit  down,  Mrs.  Nixon,  and  read  this,"  she 
said. 

Lalla  Rookh,  radiating  health  and  joy  and  affec 
tion,  a  kind  of  an  incarnation  of  sweetness  and 
light  —  plus  a  perfect  and  pleasurable  digestion 
—  sat  beside  the  thin  woman  of  her  own  age, 
whose  life  seemed  so  meagre,  and  held  the  folded 
sheet  in  her  lap  for  a  moment  without  looking  at 
it. 

"So  you  wanted  to  see  me,  dear?  Well — " 
The  goddess  patted  the  long,  thin,  brown  hand 
on  the  typewriter  keys. 

The  girl  nodded  at  the  circular  in  the  lap  beside 
her,  but  Mrs.  Nixon  went  on :  "  Oh,  Elsie,  we 
are  going  to  win  this  fight.  I've  been  at  headquar 
ters  all  day  and  we  know  exactly  how  we  stand. 
Two  women  and  one  man  are  working  in  every 
block,  all  under  precinct  captains  and  ward  leaders, 
and  the  fight  is  won  —  it's  won,  Elsie !  "  She  put 
the  circular  on  the  table,  still  folded,  and  squeezed 
the  girl  in  sheer  joy  of  life,  and  then  picked 
up  the  paper  and  asked:  "What  is  this,  any 
way?" 


36  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

"Read  it,"  replied  Elsie  soberly,  adding: 
"  They  are  going  to  spring  it  to-night  if — " 

The  girl  saw  the  splendid,  effective,  exuberant 
woman  pass  suddenly  down  creation's  line.  She 
saw  the  colour  come  and  go  from  shame  to  fear 
and  fear  to  shame,  and  saw  the  trembling  jaw  set 
and  the  set  jaw  tremble,  and  the  hands  flutter  in 
fear  and  grip  the  paper  in  rage.  The  frightened 
creature  turned  to  the  reporter,  and  licking  her 
trembling  ashen  lips  said: 

"If  _what?" 

"  If  you  don't  get  out  of  the  fight  to-night," 
answered  the  reporter.  "  We  just  got  it  at  half 
past  four.  Archimedes  thought  your  father  was 
too  old  to  handle  it.  I  said  your  husband  should 


not  see  — " 


"  Oh,  thank  you  —  thank  — " 

The  girl  took  the  sheet  from  the  floor  where  it 
had  dropped  as  she  went  on :  "  And  I  thought  of 
Doctor  Paul;  but  I  knew  he'd  probably  go  to 
shooting  —  or  some  fool  thing!  " 

The  woman  nodded  and  said  u  Yes,"  more  in  a 
gasp  than  an  assent. 

11  So  I  sent  for  you."  The  girl  put  a  steadying 
hand  on  the  fluttering  fingers.  "  Now,  then,  Lalla 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  37 

Rookh  Longford,  brace  up.  We're  both  thirty- 
five  years  old.  You  know  me;  you  knew  me  in 
school,  and  you  knew  me  when  I  delivered  the 
washing  to  your  house  in  my  little  wagon,  and 
when  I  set  type  here  in  the  back  room.  I'm  not 
pretty-for-nice,  Lalla,  but  I'm  here  to  help !  " 

As  she  spoke  she  saw  the  beautiful  mouth  twitch 
ing  and  heard  the  sobs  struggling  to  rise,  and  in 
another  instant  Lalla  Rookh  was  convulsed  in 
weeping.  Her  whole  frame  shook  and  she 
moaned. 

"  What  have  I  done !  What  have  I  done !  Be 
fore  God,  I've  done  no  evil  —  no  evil  —  no  evil ! 
Oh,  what  have  I  done !  "  she  cried  as  she  clenched 
her  soft  white  hands.  The  reporter  rose  and 
stood  looking  at  the  woman  as  she  breasted  wave 
after  wave  of  self-pity  and  let  her  emotions  go  un 
restrained.  The  curtains  were  drawn,  and  the 
lamp  under  its  paper  shade  fell  only  on  the  type 
writer  beneath  it.  In  the  half  darkness  the  two 
women  were  as  remote  from  the  world  as  they 
would  have  been  upon  a  desert  island.  Finally 
the  shuddering  form  grew  still  and  the  wet  eyes 
lifted  guiltily  to  the  girl's  pale-gray  eyes,  and  with 
intriguing  candour  in  the  brown  eyes  the  woman 


38  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

began  imploring  Elsie  for  pity  even  before  the 
gentle  voice  spoke. 

"  You  don't  understand,  Elsie,  you  don't  un 
derstand  !  "  cried  the  seductive  voice.  "  God 
never  let  you  be  tempted;  you  never  have  fought 
my  fight."  She  rose,  came  to  the  girl,  and  clasp 
ing  her  hands  whispered :  "  But  as  God  is  my 
witness  He  knows  I  did  no  evil,  and  that  " —  she 
looked  at  the  sheet  on  the  table  and  shivered  — 
"  that  is  a  lie  —  a  lie !  Oh,  it's  not  true  —  only 
part  of  it.  We  did  go  there,  but  it  was  to  rescue 
that  Snay  girl  when  she  went  back  once.  And  we 
got  her.  Father  was  in  the  carriage  outside  when 
we  went  there  and  brought  her  home  again." 

"  That's  all  right,  we  won't  discuss  that  part 
of  it,"  interrupted  the  reporter.  "  What  shall  we 
do  about  it?  How  can  I  help?  I  want  to  help 
and  —  Well,  it's  my  assignment  from  the  office 
to  help.  What's  your  first  move?  " 

"  First,"  answered  the  woman,  who  was  coming 
back  from  her  long  drop  down  the  line  of  creation 
and  sat  gripping  the  desk,  "  call  up  Doctor  Paul. 
I  must  be  the  first  to  tell  him  this  —  to  keep  him 
from  — " 

"  Yes."     In  a  second  Elsie  was  sending  in  the 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  39 

call.  When  they  found  that  the  Doctor  was  out 
on  a  professional  visit  the  two  women  pondered  a 
moment.  "  I'll  wait  here  with  you.  Telephone 
Gregory  to  go  on  with  dinner.  Tell  him  I'm  busy ; 
he'll  understand." 

A  minute  later,  after  the  girl  had  hung  up  the 
receiver,  the  woman  asked:  "  Elsie,  were  you 
ever  in  love  ?  "  She  took  the  girl's  two  hands  and 
held  them  tightly  as  she  spoke.  The  reporter 
nodded,  and  Mrs.  Nixon  went  on :  "  Then  tell 
me,  what  is  the  matter  with  me  ?  I  love  my  hus 
band;  I  love  my  children.  And  yet — " 

Then  the  slow,  hard  voice  of  the  girl  beside  her 
began,  as  one  reading  dim  print:  "And  yet 
you've  lived  soft  and  you  are  soft  clear  through. 
Listen :  Charley  and  I  have  been  going  together 
ten  years;  we  are  kind  of  engaged  and  no  one 
on  earth  knows  it.  He's  got  his  crippled  mother 
and  his  consumptive  sister.  And  me?  —  I've  got 
pa.  Don't  you  think  —  oh,  Lalla  Rookh,  don't 
you  think  it's  hard  sometimes  —  hard  when  I  hear 
my  children  calling  out  in  the  night  —  hear  the  fire 
on  my  hearth  crackle  —  don't  you  think  it's  hard? 
Yet  if  Charley  went  back  on  them  I'd  not  —  not  — 
I'd  not  care  for  him,  and  he  never  yet  has  asked 


40  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

me  to  leave  pa !  I'll  just  tell  you  something  — 
it's  five  years  — •  it'll  be  Tsix  in  December  —  since 
he  kissed  me." 

The  woman  beside  her  was  sobbing.  The  girl 
broke  her  hands  away  and  squared  the  woman 
round  rather  rudely. 

"  Wait  a  minute,"  she  called.  "  I'll  try  to  get 
the  Doctor  on  the  phone  again.  Now  you  brace 
up!  You  can't  afford  to  have  any  high  jinks; 
you've  got  to  act."  After  the  telephone  had  re 
vealed  the  fact  that  the  Doctor  was  on  the  way  to 
his  office  Elsie  went  on:  "  Your  trouble,  Lalla 
Longford,  is  that  you  haven't  got  it  in  your  noodle 
that  love  is  sacrifice.  What  have  you  ever  given 
up  for  your  man  or  your  kids  ?  Ask  yourself  — 
not  a  blessed  thing.  You've  had  this  grand  flirta 
tion  with  the  Doctor,  and  made  a  fool  of  him  if 
there  ever  was  one.  And  you've  paraded  round 
indulging  in  your  philanthropic  desires  like  a  dope 
fiend,  and  what  have  you  given  up?  Now  just 
what?" 

The  larger  woman  shook  her  head  and  clearly 
was  thinking  of  something  else.  She  was  working 
out  in  her  mind,  through  the  labyrinth  of  the  politi 
cal  situation  as  she  knew  it,  some  plan  to  stop 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  41 

the  publication  of  the  circular,  either  with  her 
lover's  help  or  with  her  father's.  Not  once  did 
she  bring  her  husband  back  from  his  journey 
among  the  atoms  and  ions  and  electrons  far  into 
the  heart  of  matter  to  help  her.  When  she 
thought  of  him  she  flushed  with  shame. 

When  the  phone  bell  rang  she  started,  and  when 
the  reporter  had  handed  the  receiver  to  her  she 
said  in  a  low,  excited  voice :  "  Yes,  Paul,  it's 
Lalla.  Will  you  come  out  to  the  house  as  quickly 
as  possible?  I  must  see  you.  Good-bye."  She 
rose  full  of  determination,  with  all  her  faculties  in 
hand,  and  with  her  jaw  firm  and  her  eyes  all  but 
flaming  with  excitement.  Then  she  turned  to  the 
reporter  and  cried :  "  You  stay  right  here,  and  I'll 
phone  you  when  I  need  you.  I'm  bound  to  need 
you  by  eight  or  nine  o'clock.  I'm  going  to  turn 
this  circular  —  where  is  it?  Oh,  yes,  all  right. 
I'm  going  to  let  father  and  Paul  read  this,  and  we 
three  will  work  out  some  plan  or  something.  But 
we  may  need  you  —  you  can  act  for  us !  "  She 
turned  to  go,  then  came  back  and  kissed  the  girl 
and  cried:  "  Oh,  Elsie,  Elsie,  don't  think  I  don't 
appreciate  you ;  you're  the  very  salt  of  the  earth !  " 
Then  she  hurried  away. 


42  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

It  was  after  eight  o'clock  when  she  met  the 
Doctor  at  the  front  door  of  Longheath.  She  did 
not  give  him  her  hand.  She  did  not  meet  his  eyes. 
She  would  not  take  his  arm  as  was  her  wont  when 
they  were  alone  in  the  house.  She  put  aside  al 
most  angrily  his  question  as  to  her  mood,  and  as 
the  man  and  woman  side  by  side  went  through 
the  hall  it  was  in  a  silence  as  though  they  were  ap 
proaching  some  dread  doom.  They  saw  through 
the  living-room  window  the  light  in  the  Professor's 
laboratory,  and  the  woman  caught  the  man's 
sleeve  and  whispered : 

"  There  he  is.  We  won't  disturb  him.  Father 
is  with  him."  She  went  on:  "  Come  back  here 
to  the  big  table  and  read  this." 

She  handed  the  circular  to  the  Doctor,  and  stood 
over  him  while  he  read,  with  her  hand  upon  his 
shoulder.  She  could  feel  his  body  under  her  fin 
gers  give  under  the  impact  of  the  blow.  When  he 
looked  up  he  was  cursing  in  a  low,  hoarse  whis 
per. 

"Quit  it!  Brace  up!  Think,  man  —  think; 
there  is  some  way  to  stop  this.  Father's  smart. 
Now  then — "  She  left  him  with  a  quick  stride 
and  called  down  a  corridor.  Through  the  win- 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  43 

dow  they  could  see  the  Colonel  moving  about 
the  laboratory  and  could  see  the  Professor  bending 
over  his  table.  When  the  Colonel  came  in  answer 
to  her  call  the  gaunt,  shaggy  old  man,  with  just 
the  faintest  shuffle  in  his  military  tread  and  the 
shadow  of  a  slouch  in  his  bearing,  smiled  at  the 
pair  in  the  living-room  and  joked  his  old  joke: 
"  Well,  how're  Pelleas  and  Melisande  this  even- 
ing?  " 

"Father  —  Father!"  she  repeated  tragically; 
"  don't  —  don't !  Sit  down  —  here  by  the  lamp." 
She  handed  him  the  circular  without  a  word  and 
pointed  to  it,  saying:  "You  must  help"!  Oh, 
Father,  you  must,  you  must  help !  " 

As  the  old  man  fumbled  for  his  glasses  he  said : 
"  Well,  I'm  glad  to  help.  I  was  helping  Gregory 
in  there  with  that  electrical  experiment.  The 
transformer  doesn't  work  some  way,  but  he  says 
he'll  get  it  down."  The  Colonel  finally  got  on  his 
glasses.  The  two  stood  watching  him.  He  had 
not  fixed  his  eyes  on  the  sheet  half  a  minute  be 
fore  he  began:  "What  in  hell  is—"  Then  a 
few  seconds  later:  "  Well,  Go  — " 

But  a  horrible  blue-green  glare  in  the  window 
and  a  crashing  sound  scattered  the  group,  and  they 


44  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

went  running  to  the  laboratory.  It  could  not  have 
been  ten  seconds  from  the  time  they  saw  the  glare 
that  the  Colonel  had  shut  off  the  current,  and  in 
the  darkness  they  stumbled  over  the  body  of  the 
Professor.  The  smell  of  scorching  clothing  was 
in  the  air  and  the  little  tongues  of  flame  were 
lapping  about  the  legs  of  a  stool.  While  her 
father  and  the  Doctor  were  stamping  out  the 
flames  and  chattering  orders  at  each  other,  Mrs. 
Nixon  accepted  the  challenge  of  death.  She  bent 
over  the  limp  figure  against  which  she  had  stum 
bled  in  the  dark.  She  lifted  it  without  a  gasp, 
carried  it  into  the  living-room  and  put  it  on  a 
couch.  Under  her  command  the  Colonel  was 
drawing  water  from  a  faucet  in  the  laboratory  and 
the  Doctor  was  at  his  medicine  case,  and  the 
woman,  losing  no  second  by  a  false  motion  or  a 
clumsy  finger,  was  tearing  away  the  clothing  from 
about  the  Professor's  neck.  She  worked  his  arms 
and  did  not  speak  or  look  round  as  she  bent  to  her 
task.  She  was  unconscious  of  the  Doctor  at  the 
table,  but  as  the  seconds  assembled  into  a  minute 
she  realised  that  he  was  fluttering  and  fumbling 
with  his  medicines. 

The  Colonel's  hands  were  pouring  water  upon 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  45 

the  ashen  face,  and  his  old  legs  were  hurrying  him 
to  and  fro  from  the  laboratory  with  slopping  beak 
ers.  She  kept  murmuring  "Hurry!"  over  and 
over  as  she  worked.  Finally,  at  another  half  min 
ute's  end  she  turned  quickly  and  saw  the  fumbling 
hands  of  the  Doctor  —  the  steel  fingers  fatuously 
wiggling,  crazy  and  out  of  control.  When  she 
had  turned  back  to  her  work  her  mind  recorded 
to  her  consciousness  that  the  fine  forehead  of  the 
Doctor  and  his  upper  lip  were  beady  with  sweat. 
At  that  moment  she  did  not  see  the  devil  shriving 
the  Doctor's  soul.  For  so  desperately  was  she 
wrestling  with  death  that  she  did  not  translate  the 
meaning  of  the  Doctor's  visage,  nor  read  the  warn 
ing  in  his  mad  hands.  She  was  breathing  into  her 
husband's  lungs  from  her  own  lungs  deep  drafts 
of  air;  but  when  death  and  the  devil  came  up  be 
hind  her,  as  the  Doctor  moved,  she  glanced  for  a 
moment  into  his  face,  saw  the  bestial  glint  in  his 
eyes,  and  saw  a  bestial  slant  to  his  slinking  shoul 
ders  and  swaying  body  and  half  rose  to  cry : 

"Paul!" 

The  Doctor  tried  to  answer,  but  his  voice  had 
slipped  from  its  control.  She  repeated :  "  What's 
that?  What's  that?  "  looking  at  the  medicine  in 


46  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

his  hand.  A  whisper  came  sputtering  out  of  the 
cruel  animal  mouth ;  she  did  not  heed  it.  For  their 
eyes  met,  and  in  the  silence  she  understood  him. 
With  one  free  hand  she  knocked  the  medicine  from 
the  unsteady  fingers.  Half  rising,  she  crouched 
over  the  body  as  if  to  shield  it,  and  cried  to  her 
father:  "Telephone  for  Doctor  Roberts  and 
Doctor  Keller  —  quick!  "  Then,  when  her  com 
mand  had  started  her  father  .to  the  telephone,  she 
whispered  to  the  Doctor:  "  Hide  that  medicine 
case.  The  other  doctors  must  not  think — " 

Then  she  lost  consciousness  of  the  Doctor,  and 
with  no  more  tremor  than  a  machine  she  held 
to  her  fight  with  death.  Something  back  of  her 
consciousness  was  directing  that  fight,  something 
strong,  capable,  precise,  indomitable. 

The  Doctor  reached  to  touch  the  limp  hand 
nearest  to  him,  but  from  her  distraught  eyes  a  look 
sent  him  back  ashamed.  In  that  look  she  saw 
that  the  beast  had  left  him.  She  saw  his  calm, 
professional  face,  gray  and  worn  and  haggard. 
"  Come  here  and  work  —  work !  "  she  cried  as  she 
heard  wheels  scraping  the  gravel  of  the  driveway 
and  knew  another  doctor  had  arrived. 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  47 

It  was  ten  o'clock.  Mrs.  Nixon  was  talking  to 
the  Globe  office  and  Elsie  Barnes  was  at  the  other 
end  of  the  wire.  Mrs.  Nixon  was  speaking  clearly 
and  so  that  the  Doctor  in  the  next  room  and  the 
maids  might  hear:  "  You  may  say  for  me,  in  to 
morrow's  paper,  that  this  accident  naturally  will 
keep  me  from  my  work  on  the  Law  and  Order 
Committee  until  after  the  election,  and  that  I  have 
been  compelled  to  resign  from  the  chairmanship. 
You  understand,  Elsie?"  Then  the  Colonel, 
standing  by  his  daughter,  heard  her  say:  "  Now, 
Elsie,  call  me  up  any  time  to-night  if  anything  goes 
wrong." 

The  old  man  was  wet-eyed  and  broken,  not  the 
strong  old  man  he  had  been  when  he  came  laugh 
ing  out  of  the  laboratory  less  than  two  hours  be 
fore.  The  voices  of  the  trio  of  doctors  in  the  sick 
room  could  be  heard;  but  they  were  not  excited 
voices.  One  laughed ;  another  was  trying  to  make 
the  patient  laugh.  Doctor  Kurtlin  was  evidently 
at  the  head  of  the  stairs,  coming  down. 

"  Little  girl,  little  girl!  "  cried  the  unsteady  old 
voice.  "  I'm  an  old  man,  an  old  man,  and  they've 
cracked  my  old  bones  and  they've  put  water  in 


48  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

my  blood  and  broken  my  heart !  But  oh,  my  little 
girl,  IVe  given  you  an  Irish  spirit  and  God  loves 
the  Irish  — '  all's  well  with  the  world !  '  " 

He  kissed  her  and  made  way  for  a  child  in  her 
little  nightie  with  braids  down  her  back,  coming 
to  say  her  belated  prayers.  The  mother  fondled 
the  girl  for  a  second  and  set  her  kneeling,  as  the 
Doctor  paused  on  the  stair  landing  and  gazed  be 
seechingly  across  the  little  figure.  The  woman 
looked  for  a  moment  at  the  man,  then  shook  her 
head,  and  the  Colonel  from  his  post  down  the  cor 
ridor  heard  the  front  door  open  and  close  and  felt 
the  night  wind  blowing  through  the  house. 

PART  III 

When  the  Nixons  came  home  from  Europe  — 
from  their  two  years'  sojourn  in  Europe  —  the 
Professor  brought  back  sundry  medals,  degrees 
and  honourable  parchments  from  the  universities 
in  what  the  Colonel  called  the  effete  and  crumbling 
capitals  of  Europe.  And  the  town  was  properly 
impressed.  But  Lalla  Rookh,  she  that  was  born 
Longford,  brought  back  seven  trunk-loads  of  plun 
der.  And  she  gave  a  series  of  exhibitions  for  her 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  49 

corals  from  Naples  and  cameos  from  Florence, 
for  her  beaten  silver  and  scarfs  from  Rome,  for 
her  prints  from  Germany,  for  her  millinery  from 
Paris  and  her  silks  from  London. 

Then  too  she  slipped  through  the  custom-house 
before  the  very  eyes  of  the  inspectors  a  series  of 
poses,  which  she  used  in  her  home  —  for  practice 
—  and  when  there  was  an  audience,  for  applause ; 
and  these  elaborate  poses,  that  she  had  collected 
from  the  statuary  of  the  museums,  gave  her  such 
a  classical  effect  that  Archimedes  spoke  of  her  al 
ways  as  the  Goddess  of  Longheath.  From  her 
face,  which  had  taken  form  and  colour  from  the 
galleries  of  Germany,  it  was  obvious  that  she  had 
some  sort  of  notion  that  she  was  a  kind  of  Ma 
donna  of  the  Clubs  —  the  federated  clubs. 

But  the  most  important  thing  she  brought  was  a 
large  oversoul  —  like,  say,  crinoline  —  which  she 
seemed  to  have  picked  up  somewhere  in  the  North 
Country.  She  showed  her  hardware  and  shelf 
goods  and  goddess  effects  to  the  women  of  the  city 
federation;  she  displayed  her  dry  goods  and  mil 
linery  and  madonnas  to  the  Monday  Music  Club ; 
but  she  kept  her  oversoul  for  her  more  particular 
friends.  She  got  it  out  one  night  for  the  old 


50  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

Colonel,  but  he  shook  his  grizzled  head  and 
cried: 

"To  hell  with  it,  Lally!  And  while  we're  a- 
talking,  gel,  let  me  break  off  a  bit  of  my  under- 
soul,  which  has  been  ingrowing  for  the  two  years 
I've  been  alone  here  with  Archimedes  downtown 
and  the  cat  at  the  house;  and  you  can  as  well 
take  it  now  as  any  other  time,  and  this  is  the  size 
of  it:  Your  first  job  in  the  cosmos  is  the  kids! 
Your  oversoul,  spreading  over  the  infinite  and 
touchin'  all  the  other  gay  young  chips  off  the  old 
block  of  primal  energy  or  first  cause  or  the  billy-be- 
dee  of  your  moonshine,  is  all  very  grand;  but  the 
kids  have  their  rights  to  a  motherin' !  " 

"  But,  Father,  if  a  woman  feels  she  has  a  higher 
mastery  than  — " 

"Ah-h-h!"  drawled  the  disgusted  old  man. 
"  Lally,  Lally,  ye're  like  Paddy  Mahone's  dog  — 
you're  always  goin'  a  bit  of  the  way  with  'em  all 
and  getting  nowhere !  Let  me  tell  you  something, 
daughter  of  my  heart's  core ;  and  'tis  this :  When 
the  angels  took  the  snip  with  the  scissors  that  made 
you  a  woman,  my  darlin',  they  gave  you  the  high 
est  mastery  in  the  world  —  the  transmission  of  the 
life-stuff  of  the  race  from  the  last  generation  to 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  51 

the  next.  You're  the  vessel,  my  gel,  wherein  the 
destiny  of  the  race  is  bilin'.  It  isn't  merely  your 
body  that's  important,  wherein  the  seeds  are 
warmed  into  life;  though  that's  much  and  that's 
why  you  should  treat  it  like  God's  temple.  The 
important  thing  is  your  soul,  for  trimmin'  and 
prunin'  and  pickin'  and  sortin'  and  choosin'  and 
shieldin'  and  passin'  into  reality  the  dreams  of  to 
day.  I  don't  mind  your  votin'  and  your  agitatin' 
to  make  a  better  world  about  ye  for  the  settin'  of 
your  workshop;  that's  part  of  your  job,  too,  and  I 
glory  in  your  spunk,  gel.  But  your  job's  in  your 
workshop  as  sure  as  the  Lord's  in  His  holy  temple, 
and  don't  let  this  damn  nonsense  about  your  over- 
soul  hookin'  you  up  with  infinity  tempt  you  away 
from  a  duty  that  makes  you  a  part  of  God's  plan 
of  progress  —  little  or  big,  as  you  have  the  heart 
and  the  skill  for  it — and  as  plain,  Lally,  as  a  boil 
on  the  back  of  your  neck !  " 

Whereupon  Lalla  Rookh  went  to  the  piano  and 
played  a  movement  from  Schubert's  Unfinished 
Symphony  and  thought  of  the  Doctor,  and  tried 
to  remember  why  she  hated  him,  or  if  she  did  hate 
him  at  all,  and  if  it  wasn't  a  sort  of  hang-over  hate 
from  their  disagreement  on  a  lower  plane  where 


52  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

he  had  been  an  unpaternal  tomcat  and  eaten  all  the 
offspring  in  their  first  meeting  in  the  jungle,  or 
something  equally  important.  For  she  was  con 
vinced  that  her  consciousness  here  was  but  the  re 
flection  of  the  phenomena  of  time  and  space  upon 
some  small  apex  of  her  submerged  soul  that  sank 
deep  into  a  cosmic  iceberg  floating  in  the  sea  of 
infinity.  So  she  was  vastly  more  concerned  about 
bumping  into  other  icebergs  and  freezing  to  them 
spiritually,  as  it  were,  than  she  was  about  the  area 
of  reflection  in  the  mundane  sun.  The  Doctor, 
however,  held  a  low  opinion  of  the  iceberg  theory. 
He  was  devoting  himself  with  some  degree  of  con 
sistency  and  great  enthusiasm  to  going  to  hell  by 
the  drug  route.  He  seemed  to  have  no  time  for 
Lalla  Rookh  and  her  cosmic  theories. 

So  Mrs.  Nixon  went  floating  about  as  a  goddess 
in  her  copious  crinoline  oversoul,  touching  a  num 
ber  of  things  that  in  reality  did  not  exist!  And 
the  Nixon  children's  noses  needed  more  or  less  at 
tention,  and  their  shoes  went  unsoled,  and  their 
little  breeches  were  often  sadly  neglected.  Now 
a  handsome  woman  —  and  no  one  ever  held  that 
her  transcendental  rigging  made  her  the  less  hand 
some  or  dimmed  in  the  slightest  the  gorgeous  beef- 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  53 

steak  dinners  she  gave  to  the  Professor's  Ion  Club 
—  a  handsome  woman  who  goes  about  in  the  seas 
of  infinity,  sailing  mostly  with  the  hatches  down 
and  scanning  the  lower  currents  of  the  universe 
for  submarine  craft,  is  liable  before  she  knows  it 
to  be  flying  at  the  masthead  of  her  ship,  as  a  sig 
nal,  a  palpable  and  material  petticoat,  and  waving 
it  at  such  trousers  as  may  heave  in  sight.  For  it's 
the  way  of  all  flesh! 

The  person  who  considers  too  seriously  the  ca 
prices  of  his  astral  arrangements  is  playing  danger 
ously  near  his  emotions,  and  that  is  a  slippery  play 
ground. 

"  I  can't  resist  her,"  cried  Elsie  as  the  big,  beau 
tiful  creature  in  a  Paris  street  gown  swept  out  of 
the  office  after  leaving  with  the  society  reporter 
the  programme  of  the  Monday  Music  Club. 
"  Charley,  I  simply  can't  resist  her.  She  comes 
in  here  and  kisses  me  and  hugs  me  like  a  soft,  per 
fumed,  upholstered  bear,  and  she  holds  my  hand 
and  makes  love  to  me.  And,  Charley,  I'm  going 
to  propose  to  her  and  elope  with  her  if  you  don't 
keep  her  away !  " 

The  advertising  solicitor  looked  at  the  reporter 
a  moment  and  shook  his  head  sadly :  "  It's  tough, 


54  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

isn't  it,  Elsie?"  He  paused  a  moment  and  put 
his  hand  across  her  desk  and  began:  "Elsie, 
Elsie  — " 

"  Don't  you  come  round  here  Elsieing  me, 
Charley,  at  one-thirty,  with  the  copy  hook  sticking 
up  as  bare  as  Pike's  Peak  and' three  machines  go- 
ing." 

He  tossed  his  head  and  rose,  saying  as  he  went: 
"  All  right,  have  it  your  way,  Miss  Porcupine. 
You  don't  have  to  throw  your  quills  at  — " 

"  Say,  Charley,  what  do  you  think?  "  she  called 
as  she  looked  over  the  programme  Mrs.  Nixon 
had  laid  down.  "They've  discovered  Jim!" 
To  his  lifting  eyebrows  she  answered:  "Why, 
our  Jim  —  fighting  Jim,  the  railroad  reporter  — 
the  Monday  Music  Club  has  discovered  Jim's  voice 
and  they've  got  him  on  the  programme !  " 

"  No.     You  don't  mean  it !  " 

"Well,  here  it  is,  big  as  life,"  and  she  read: 
"  '  Violets  —  James  Lawton.'  Fancy  old  Jim  as 
a  society  bud!  Oh,  me!  Oh,  my!  Now,  who 
do  you  suppose?  " 

"  Well,"  smiled  the  advertising  solicitor  wick 
edly,  "  if  it's  your  goddess  lady  and  she  tries  any 
of  her  '  endearing  young  charms  '  on  Jim,  she'll 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  55 

live  to  regret  it.  Jim's  been  eating  raw  beef  and 
chewing  barbed  wire  for  a  year  now  to  get  in  train 
ing  to  lick  the  yardmaster,  and  Jim's  not  up  to 
much  coddling." 

He  was  a  rather  gaudily  but  poorly  dressed  and 
highly  overbrushed  young  man  who  sat  crossing 
and  recrossing  his  legs  in  the  big  living-room  of 
Longheath  waiting  for  the  Monday  Music  Club 
to  assemble.  He  did  not  know  that  two-thirty 
meant  three-fifteen  with  the  music  club.  He  was 
not  temperamental.  He  was  used  to  making 
trains  and  reading  time-tables,  and  as  he  talked  to 
the  hostess  he  gripped  his  roll  of  sheet  music  as 
though  it  were  his  one  hope  of  safety.  She  tried 
to  talk  art,  and  told  him  she  had  heard  his  voice 
had  a  dramatic  quality.  He  grinned  and  won 
dered  what  Elsie  would  say  when  he  told  her  that; 
also  he  wondered  what  a  dramatic  quality  was. 
She  knew  it  would  be  half  an  hour  before  the  club 
assembled,  so  she  tried  to  coax  him  to  sing  —  and 
in  coaxing  discovered  that  he  didn't  know  one  note 
from  another  and  that  he  sang  entirely  by  ear. 

Finally,  after  she  had  let  him  tell  two  or  three 
stories  about  the  social  jealousies  of  Mrs.  First 
Assistant  Night-Wiper  Martin  and  Mrs.  Second 


56  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

Assistant  Cinderpit-Cleaner  Gordon,  who  had  se 
cret  ambitions  that  some  day  their  husbands  would 
be  conductors,  she  wheedled  him  to  the  piano  and, 
finding  what  he  could  sing,  began  to  tempt  him 
with  wisps  of  accompaniment.  Then  for  a  mo 
ment  he  let  out  his  big  voice  —  the  great  bull-roar 
that  he  released  in  the  press-room  at  night  when  he 
and  the  printers  were  washing  up  for  the  day,  and 
it  jarred  the  bric-a-brac  noticeably,  and  more. 
Mrs.  Nixon  began  gripping  the  keys  of  the  piano 
as  though  they  were  the  neck  cords  of  her  sweetest 
enemy.  Also  she  lifted  up  what  voice  she  had  and 
sang  a  sort  of  tenor-alto  until  the  tears  came  into 
her  eyes. 

When  the  members  of  the  club  began  to  arrive 
Jim  kept  standing  by  the  piano,  hoping  she  would 
ask  him  to  sing  again,  and  she  had  to  lead  him 
away  by  the  arm.  The  membership  of  the  club 
was  composed  largely  of  women;  two  men  from 
the  music  department  of  the  college  came,  and  Jim 
sniffed  at  them  and  all  but  growled.  He  sat  in  the 
far  corner  where  his  hostess  had  put  him,  with  his 
deep-black  eyes  watching  her,  craning  his  head  be 
times  to  see  her,  holding  his  eyes  on  the  door  when 
she  left  the  room  and  gazing  intently  at  her  hands 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  57 

and  arms  as  she  came  to  him  with  a  cup  of  tea. 
He  took  the  tea,  told  her  how  the  girl  at  the  High 
Sign  Lunch  counter  wouldn't  give  the  switchmen 
saucers  for  fear  they'd  pour  their  coffee  in  the  sau 
cers  and  disgust  all  the  swell  trade,  and  then,  being 
on  his  feet,  he  followed  her  much  like  a  dog  all 
over  the  room,  and  she  could  not  get  rid  of  him  — 
even  if  she  really  had  cared  to.  But  she  was  salv 
ing  him  in  her  over-soul,  and  it  was  a  joyful  sen 
sation. 

She  literally  had  to  put  him  out  of  the  house, 
following  the  departure  of  the  last  lingering  guest. 
Young  Mr.  Lawton  lounged  leisurely  down  the 
winding  walk  and,  seeing  the  Colonel  working  with 
a  pruning  hook  among  the  trees,  sauntered  over 
to  him  and  called :  "  Say,  Colonel,  swell  joint  you 
got  here.  I  hadn't  never  been  here  but  once  — 
that  night  the  Prof  was  electrocuted,  and  I  didn't 
get  to  see  much  of  it  then." 

The  Colonel  looked  the  youth  over  and  laughed : 
"  How  did  you  get  out  the  front  way?  " 

"  Sang  my  way  in  and  sang  my  way  out.  I'm 
a  Tyrolean  warbler  all  right,  Colonel,  didn't  you 
know  about  that?  Well,  '  the  pride  of  the  whole 
house  is  papa's  babee,'  eh,  Colonel?  " 


58  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

The  pruning  shears  snapped  and  the  old  man 
moved  away:  "  Gwan  wid  ye,  Jimmy  Lawton. 
I  knew  your  father  when  he  was  caterin'  in  a  livery 
stable  and  yer  mother  when  you  could  hear  her 
singin'  over  the  dishes  at  the  Astor  House  half  a 
mile  away.  You  in  society!  Music,  heavenly 
maid,  is  hard  up  for  company!  " 

Jim  told  this  ten  minutes  later  at  the  office  and 
we  had  a  laugh  about  it.  But  after  we  had  en 
dured  three  days  of  what  they  did  at  the  musicale, 
how  they  dressed,  what  they  had  to  eat,  what  they 
said,  why  and  how  and  when  they  said  it,  with  the 
words  "  swell  women "  jangling  interminably 
through  his  talk  over  and  over,  morning,  noon  and 
night,  until  it  was  plain  that  Jim  was  getting  a  fixed 
idea,  Elsie  called  the  big  reporter  in  and  preached 
at  him : 

"  Cut  it  out,  Jimmy;  they're  not  your  kind  of 
people.  You  can't  trot  in  that  class;  it'll  only 
bring  you  trouble.  They'll  listen  to  you  sing  and 
laugh  at  your  manners.  Don't  go  up  there  again." 
But  the  flush  that  she  saw  in  his  cheeks  and  the 
fire  in  his  eyes  could  not  be  quenched. 

It  was  a  sad  day  for  the  Globe  office  when 
Jimmy  took  to  society.  After  three  months  at  the 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  59 

college  music  department,  where  they  taught  him 
to  open  his  mouth  and  to  slip  in  extra  syllables 
in  his  singing  words  by  way  of  emotional  emphasis, 
the  head  waitress  at  the  railroad  eating  house  saw 
that  there  was  no  chance  for  her.  He  would  hurry 
over  his  beat  like  a  hound,  picking  up  bits  of  news, 
then  scurry  back  to  his  music  lessons.  He  quit 
chumming  with  the  head  pit  man  in  the  roundhouse 
and  the  switch  shanty  knew  him  no  more.  But  he 
lowered  no  flag  to  the  yardmaster,  and  still  told  the 
reporters  in  the  office  that  some  day  the  yard- 
master  would  appear  with  what  Jimmy  called  the 
"  fixin's  "  on  him.  Jim  held  his  job,  of  course ;  but 
that  was  all.  He  invested  his  substance  in  evening 
clothes  as  gorgeous  as  his  Sunday  suit  was  gaudy, 
and  Elsie  thought  she  could  see  the  eye  of  Lalla 
Rookh  in  the  design  of  Jimmy's  de-luxe  regalia. 
It  had  a  vague  European  air  that  was  foreign  to 
New  Raynham. 

But  they  certainly  were  helping  the  young  man's 
voice  at  the  college,  and  in  the  spring  he  had  a 
solo  part  in  the  oratorio  at  the  musical  festival  and 
bellowed  most  feelingly  through  several  hours  of 
pure  music.  In  the  town's  society,  where  Jimmy 
often,  like  little  Tom  Tucker,  sang  for  his  supper, 


60  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

he  was  known  as  Mrs.  Nixon's  "  Golden  Musical 
Discovery,"  and  the  years  between  their  ages  made 
it  easy  for  him  to  get  to  heel  without  attracting 
much  comment.  If  only  she  had  not  kept  such 
a  tight  leash  on  him !  But  that  was  the  trouble ; 
he  would  sing  and  do  his  parlour  tricks  only  on  her 
order;  indeed  he  would  accept  only  such  invitations 
as  came  through  her.  She  played  all  his  accom 
paniments  and  took  him  to  the  city  to  hear  grand 
opera.  She  bought  quires  of  music  of  a  kind  new 
to  the  town,  which  had  become  fairly  used  to 
Wagner;  and  at  the  Monday  Music  Club  she 
would  set  Jimmy  to  barking  on  the  new  scores  — 
tuneless,  formless,  and  often  inharmonious  musi 
cal  chatter,  full  of  emotional  yelps  and  groans  and 
moans  and  complainings  that  shocked  Colonel 
Longford  into  language. 

As  for  the  Professor,  he  would  often  stand  be 
hind  his  glasses,  looking  rather  than  listening. 

And  thus  slowly  Lalla  Rookh  sapped  out 
Jimmy  Lawton's  soul.  For  a  time  —  perhaps  for 
nearly  a  year  —  the  youth's  heart  was  lava.  And 
she  let  him  glow  and  blew  upon  the  fire  all  her 
airs  and  graces.  She  had  to  struggle  to  keep  him 
to  heel;  he  was  forever  about  to  paw  her  and  rub 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  61 

against  her.  But  she  was  wise  and  he  was  young. 
Then  came  the  day  that  she  wished  for,  when  the 
lava  vaporised  and  Jimmy  was  all  but  mad.  In 
his  vapid  state  she  could  handle  him  with  a  breath. 
He  was  the  soul  of  devotion,  and  no  one  knew 
how  completely  she  had  captured  him.  But  the 
old  Colonel  suspected  and  was  wroth.  He  used 
to  cover  up  his  head  with  his  handkerchief  and  pre 
tend  to  sleep  in  the  living-room  when  Lalla  Rookh 
and  Jimmy  were  digging  away  at  their  music. 
The  old  man  saw  the  youth's  eyes  at  such  times; 
the  poor  fellow's  hands  and  feet  were  in  a  deep 
submission.  But  he  saw  his  daughter's  eyes,  and 
her  hands  were  still  free,  and  once  he  startled  the 
singers  with  a  mighty  oath  as  he  cried:  "  Let 
that  boy's  hair  alone,  I  tell  you.  He's  got  a  comb, 
Lalla;  he  can  take  care  of  it!  "  And  after  that 
when  he  pretended  to  sleep  they  stuck  to  the  score. 
When  the  two  were  alone  Lalla  Rookh  filled 
Jimmy's  head  full  of  tall  talk  of  their  souls.  And 
she  built  up  for  him  an  elaborate  fable  about  the 
union  of  their  spirits  on  another  plane.  She  read 
Emerson  to  him  — •  fancy  Jimmy  taking  on  Emer 
son  —  and  Wordsworth  and  Jean  Paul !  But  he 
didn't  even  blink  at  it,  but  looked  dog-like  into  her 


62  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

eyes  and  heard  her  soft,  purring  voice  in  an  ec 
stasy. 

Even  if  the  Colonel  alone  had  been  watching 
the  young  man  he  would  have  had  trouble  enough 
in  store  for  him;  for  the  Colonel  was  hoarding  his 
wrath.  But  gradually  he  also  noticed  that  when 
ever  Jimmy  was  at  Longheath  Doctor  Kurtlin's 
new  red  racing  car  would  come  panting  by,  always 
once,  sometimes  twice,  and  occasionally  three  and 
four  times.  The  Colonel  had  nothing  to  do  but  to 
fumble  his  cane  and  watch.  Perhaps  the  others 
did  not  notice  what  was  happening.  But  when  he 
saw  the  Doctor's  car  whizzing  past  the  house  so 
regularly  the  old  man  was  distraught  with  fear. 

A  pitiful  figure  in  the  town  was  Doctor  Kurtlin. 
His  practice  was  going;  his  clean,  trim  body  was 
slumping;  his  ruddy  skin  was  reddening;  his  fine 
eyes  were  dilating  and  glazing,  and  the  fires  of 
the  pit  gleamed  from  every  window  of  his  soul. 
And  the  Colonel  saw  it  and  hesitated,  for  it  is  the 
habit  of  age  to  wait;  and  the  Professor  saw  it  and 
was  wounded  with  a  deep  shame. 

And  Jimmy  Lawton  saw  it,  and,  knowing  what 
the  Globe  office  knew,  he  snarled  at  the  Doctor, 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  63 

and  bristled  by  him  when  they  passed  on  the  street 
and  met  each  other's  sidelong  glance  of  hate. 

Thus  stood  the  clock  when  Professor  Nixon 
started  to  Cambridge  to  receive  his  degree.  He 
left  Lalla  Rookh  and  Jimmy  and  the  children  at 
the  dinner  table  munching  nuts,  and  the  Colonel 
took  the  Professor  to  the  seven-forty  train  in  Mrs. 
Nixon's  electric  runabout.  When  the  children  had 
cleared  out,  Jimmy  and  Mrs.  Nixon  went  to  the 
veranda.  Down  in  the  railroad  yards  —  and  in 
all  his  philandering  Jimmy  never  took  his  ear  from 
the  voice  of  the  yards  —  he  heard  the  four  long 
screams  of  the  eastbound  limited.  "  There  she 
comes,  right  on  the  dot !  She'll  be  pulling  out  in 
three  minutes."  But  before  his  voice  had  paused 
he  heard  from  the  yards  the  hoarse  hoots  of  a 
great  freight  mogul  in  warning  or  distress.  A  com 
motion  followed  and  a  little  switch  engine  in  the 
west  end  of  the  yards  began  to  clamour  and  the 
switch  engine  in  the  east  end  made  reply.  Then 
he  heard  her  bell  clanging  as  she  hurried  westward. 
Ten  years  of  training  told  him  there  was  trouble 
in  the  yards,  and  he  went  to  the  telephone  and 
called  up  the  switch  shanty. 


64  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

"  Anything  serious?  "  asked  Mrs.  Nixon  as  the 
young  man  came  back  to  his  porch  chair. 

"  Oh,  nothing  to  speak  of  —  two  or  three 
freight  cars  are  ditched  at  Number  seven  switch 
down  in  the  west  yards."  He  grinned.  "  Grief 
for  that  boarding-house  gladiator  who  goes  round 
with  yardmaster  on  his  cap.  I  told  him  that 
switch  was  blinky." 

In  due  course  they  heard  the  electric  come  up 
and  disappear  in  the  garage  at  the  back  of  the 
house,  and  Lalla  Rookh  heard  her  father's  step 
in  the  living-room  behind  them,  and  when  he  had 
fumbled  over  the  evening  paper  she  heard  him 
mount  the  stairs.  It  was  a  soft  June  night  and 
her  heart  was  hungry  for  excitement,  the  kind  of 
excitement  that  sometimes  gnawed  at  her  vitals  like 
a  poison.  She  sat  in  her  swinging  chair  and  played 
upon  Jimmy  with  all  her  wiles.  She  thought  she 
heard  her  father  move  across  the  room  behind 
her  and  lowered  her  voice.  A  little  later  she  went 
into  the  room  and  turned  off  all  the  lights  save  one 
in  the  rear,  a  low  reading  lamp  before  a  large 
table.  It  shed  a  respectable  twilight  in  the  great 
room,  and  when  she  heard  her  father  moving  about 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  65 

in  the  room  directly  above  her  she  let  all  her  devils 
out  to  play. 

The  horrible  roar  of  the  Doctor's  racing  car  in 
the  street  attracted  her  attention,  but  did  not  divert 
her  from  her  feline  joy  in  the  game  with  the  mouse. 

Again  the  automobile  roared  past,  and  again, 
the  snarling,  whining  devil  in  the  hood  lifting  a 
fearsome  voice.  In  the  roar  she  had  to  lift  her 
voice  to  be  heard  for  an  instant,  and  she  did  not 
realise  that  behind  her,  sitting  at  the  reading  lamp, 
her  husband  was  writhing  in  his  soul  as  he  heard 
her  false,  overstrained  voice  and  felt  upon  his 
heart  the  searing  feet  of  all  the  devils  which  she 
played  with  so  wantonly. 

He  had  been  sitting  there  a  long  time,  it  seemed 
to  him,  waiting  for  his  delayed  train.  The  voice 
of  the  woman  —  the  fondling,  intense,  excited 
voice  of  the  woman,  and  the  hoarse,  suppressed 
man's  voice  in  broken  phrases  —  finally  had  driven 
him  mad.  He  tiptoed  back  to  his  laboratory  and 
returned,  bringing  in  one  hand  a  beaker  filled  with 
yellowish,  cloudy  liquid  and  in  the  other  a  little 
white  clod.  He  sat  for  a  time  balancing  the  clod 
over  the  glass  loosely  in  his  fingers,  and  her  voice 


66  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

purred  on.  A  child's  shrill,  gay,  pillow-fighting 
voice  came  to  him  from  a  distant  bedroom.  Then 
he  laid  down  the  potassium  cyanide  gently  on  the 
table  and  sat  listening  half  listlessly  with  closed 
eyes  to  the  dialogue  on  the  veranda.  He  dropped 
his  head  on  his  arm  and  his  body  shook  in  sobs  as 
he  pushed  with  a  blind  hand  the  glass  and  little 
white  lump  to  a  farther  corner  of  the  table. 

Again  he  heard  outside  the  roar  of  the  Doctor's 
car ;  then  the  car  slowed  down  and  he  heard  it  come 
snorting  up  the  driveway  to  the  veranda. 

He  was  on  his  feet  as  his  wife  screamed,  and  he 
heard  a  scuffle  and  a  shot  and  saw  the  flash  through 
the  window  curtain,  high  up  in  the  air,  as  though 
the  revolver  had  been  pointed  toward  the  ceiling. 

"  Bring  him  in,  Jim,  bring  him  indoors.  Don't ! 
The  whole  neighbourhood  is  ears !  "  It  was  Lalla 
Rookh  whimpering,  and  a  moment  later  through 
the  door  came  two  male  forms,  clinched.  In  the 
great,  muscular  arms  of  the  youth  the  spent  little 
Doctor  was  struggling  feebly,  his  cocaine  courage 
oozing  and  his  strength  all  gone.  At  the  noise  of 
the  shot  and  the  scuffle  the  Colonel  had  come  limp 
ing  down  the  stairs  with  his  cane,  and  stood  behind 
the  group  that  faced  the  Professor.  The  old 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  67 

man  saw  the  hulking  body  of  the  Professor,  half 
risen,  half  crouching,  with  his  hands  out  like  a 
bear's  paws;  he  saw  the  wizened,  trembling,  bent 
body  of  the  Doctor  reaching  futilely  up  for  his 
pistol  in  Jimmy's  hand,  and  the  canine  teeth  of 
Jimmy  all  but  snapping. 

The  old  man,  with  eyes  blazing  and  bloodshot, 
stood  gathering  strength,  then  broke  the  silence 
with  a  wail  —  a  long  "  Ah."  Then  he  spoke : 

"  Ah,  Lally,  Lally,  ye're  the  evil  spirit  of  the 
glen,  the  witch  of  Bryan's  Moor,  the  very  same, 
the  witch  herself !  "  He  stood  panting  in  the 
shamed  silence  and  went  on:  "  And  every  man 
that's  come  to  your  bower  is  turned  to  beast. 
Look  at  them  here,  the  little  jackal  and  this  dirty 
dog  and  yonder  great  ragin'  bear.  My  God, 
Lally,  is  this  what  ye've  made  of  your  life  —  the 
witch  of  Bryan's  Moor!"  When  he  began  to 
cry  the  spell  broke. 

The  Doctor,  wiggling  weakly  out  of  the  youth's 
strong  arm,  sank  face  down  on  a  sofa,  moaning 
miserably.  Fear  had  taken  the  colour  from 
Jimmy's  face ;  he  was  in  a  strange  place  and  could 
not  find  himself.  The  Professor  saw  the  woman, 
in  a  flash  of  horror,  looking  at  the  beaker  of  hydro- 


68  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

cloric  acid.  He  pointed  mutely  at  the  white  lump 
at  the  other  side  of  the  table  and  cried: 

"  And  this  was  to  finish  us  both  —  all  three 
probably!  "  His  face  still  was  drawn  and  pain- 
wracked  as  he  went  on:  "  That  is  the  beast  your 
enchantment  made  of  me,  Lalla !  " 

The  Colonel's  body  began  to  straighten  as  his 
spent  strength  came  back.  He  turned  in  rising 
rage  to  the  shame-ridden  woman,  whose  bare 
shoulders  and  neck  were  reddening.  She  bent  her 
eyes  to  the  floor  and  would  have  left  the  room  had 
not  the  Colonel  barred  the  way.  Wrath  was 
burning  —  a  mounting,  beating  flame  in  his  mas 
sive  old  head,  over  the  face,  through  the  veins  at 
the  temples  up  into  the  thin,  soft,  shaggy  hair. 
His  voice  was  choked  as  he  began  speaking,  but  it 
rang  out  fiercely  as  he  went  on : 

"  Maybe  to  see  the  devil  in  yer  heart  will  help 
you  to  cast  him  out  and  clean  you  —  I  dunno  — 
I  dunno!  But,  Lally  gel,  this  is  the  secret  of 
your  damned  witchery  —  it  is  yer  hellish  selfish 
ness.  That's  what  turned  'em  all  to  beasts  about 
you,  yer  black-hearted  selfishness.  I  that  begot 
ye,  know  ye,  ye  witch  of  Bryan's  Moor !  It's  for 
yerself,  yerself,  yer  own  pleasure,  is  all  yer  philan- 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  69 

thropies  and  all  yer  philanderin' —  all  fer  yerself  I 
Ye  have  taken  and  taken  and  taken  —  and  give 
nothing.  Ye  were  too  selfish  in  all  yer  lovin'  to 
give  the  boys  even  a  bit  of  a  kiss  by  way  of  diver 
sion  —  not  one  small  nibblin's  of  a  kiss  would  ye 
give  'em,  Lally  Rookh,  and  for  why?  I'll  tell  ye. 
Not  that  ye  were  too  good  and  didn't  want  it  a 
thousand  times  and  more;  but  ye  were  too  greedy 
to  call  yourself  a  good  and  virtuous  woman,  too 
damn  selfish  for  the  bit  of  a  kiss  for  your  own 
beasties  that  ye  made  with  the  witchery  of  yer  own 
greedy  guts  of  selfishness.  Ye  never  loved  any  of 
them,  not  even  Gregory  here ;  but  ye  like  the  com 
forts  of  home.  It's  a  pleasant  thing  to  have  a  day- 
cint  home  and  a  kind  man  about;  so  ye  come  run- 
nin'  here  when  yer  enchanted  menagerie  gets  too 
hot  for  you.  Ah-h-h-h,"  he  wailed,  "  and  now 
that  I'm  near  the  great  White  Door  I'm  fay  —  I'm 
fay  and  can  see  it." 

And  his  great  high  voice  was  ringing  clearly  with 
no  tremor  or  break  as  he  shook  his  snow-white 
mane  and  cried:  "  She's  my  own  begotten  flesh 
and  I  know  how  to  handle  her !  " 

He  stepped  to  her,  waving  his  cane,  and  three 
men  stood  by  and  saw  the  stick  come  whistling 


70  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

down  on  the  woman's  bare  back  and  shoulders. 
The  white  welt  reddened,  then  oozed  blood,  and 
no  one  moved.  Nor  did  the  woman  cry. 

The  Colonel  stood  looking  at  her  a  minute  as 
she  shook  with  sobs.  Then  the  old  man  turned 
to  the  two  terror-smitten  intruders  and  brandished 
his  stick,  calling: 

"  Clear  out!  Clear  out  of  here  the  both  of 
ye !  "  A  moment  later  he  left  the  husband  and 
wife  alone. 

As  he  looked  back  he  saw  the  man  coming  back 
into  the  Professor's  troubled  face,  and  on  the  land 
ing  of  the  stairs  he  saw  him  bending  over  her  as 
she  sat  shamed  and  broken.  The  husband's  face 
was  full  of  tears.  He  was  covering  her  bruised 
flesh.  Then  from  afar  the  Colonel  heard,  and 
knew  the  others  heard,  a  child's  lonely,  frightened 
voice,  calling: 

"  Mamma!     Mamma!  "     And  again  the  cry: 

"  Mamma!" 

*  * 

* 

Like  a  thousand  secrets  that  came  to  the  office, 
we  knew  the  story  of  that  night.  Partly  from 
Jimmy  we  had  it  in  terror;  partly  through  Archi- 


A  SOCIAL  RECTANGLE  71 

medes  from  the  Colonel;  partly  from  the  very  air 
that  gathers  such  things  like  dew.  It  was  one  hot 
August  night,  when  a  cool  breeze  was  just  begin- 
ing  to  stir  the  elm  trees  of  the  town,  and  Elsie  was 
helping  the  advertising  solicitor  paste  up  his 
monthly  string  and  make  his  monthly  report. 

They  were  talking  of  Jimmy  —  poor  Jimmy 
who  was  coming  in  agony  out  of  his  enchantment 
back  to  the  head  waitress  in  the  eating  house,  and 
back  to  his  chum  in  the  cinder  pit.  It  was  Elsie 
who  spoke  of  the  goddess  of  Longheath.  "  She's 
a  strange  woman  —  a  strange  woman!"  mused 
the  girl. 

"  A  strange  woman,"  repeated  Charley,  sighing; 
"  and  *  her  feet  go  down  to  death/  ' 

"  Oh,  well,  Charley,  I  don't  know.  So  far  as 
that  goes,  so  are  we  all  strange  women  —  some  of 
the  time  —  all  of  us.  But,  Charley,"  cried  the 
woman  gently,  "  one  of  us  was  chosen  as  the  first 
witness  to  the  Great  Resurrection !  " 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE" 
PART  I 

BOYCE  KILWORTH  was  a  kind  of  congenital 
Prominent  Citizen.  His  mother  it  was  —  and 
that  the  year  before  Boyce  came  into  the  world  — 
who  rose  in  New  Raynham  Colony  before  the 
Civil  War  and  stamped  out  the  Fourierism  that 
Enoch  Thacher  and  the  Williams  College  group 
were  fostering.  The  whole  notion  of  communism 
upset  Mrs.  Kilworth's  gorge.  "  Not  that  I  ob 
ject  to  their  free  lovin',"  she  was  wont  to  say, 
"  for  they  only  talk  about  that,  and  ain't  got  quite 
the  courage  for  it;  but  what  I  do  oppose,  and  shall 
ever  pray  against,  is  this  givin'  up  of  the  work  of 
our  hands  to  a  lot  of  lazy  louts  that  want  to  sit 
around  in  them  phalanxes  and  talk  about  what 
their  predilections  of  labour  is,  without  strikin'  a 
lick  of  work.  I've  got  the  Bible  for  my  property, 
and  I'm  goin'  to  keep  it."  And  she  did.  When 
baby  Boyce  was  born,  Mrs.  Kilworth's  property 

72 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "          73 

consisted  of  one  town  lot  segregated  from  the  com 
munal  holdings,  one  rangy  roan  cow  of  long- 
horned  ancestry,  and  one  brown  mound  in  the  new, 
bleak,  treeless  graveyard  on  the  gravel  hill  above 
the  town,  wherein  rested  the  body  of  the  large, 
placid,  amiable  person  who  had  agreed  with  every 
one  and  who  was  Boyce  Kilworth's  father.  With 
the  cow  and  certain  pigs  that  lived  on  the 
skimmed  milk  and  the  slops  of  her  kitchen,  Mrs. 
Kilworth  founded  her  fortune.  With  the  cow's  in 
crease  and  the  pig's  progeny  she  established  a 
boarding  house  of  great  respectability,  and  when 
little  Boyce  was  almost  through  the  common 
schools  Mrs.  Kilworth,  being  of  an  acquisitive  na 
ture,  married  her  star  boarder,  the  Rev.  Winthrop 
Hale,  a  town  father.  He  was  one  of  the  Wil 
liams  College  group,  who,  when  the  town  com 
pany's  property  was  divided,  had  accepted  as  his 
allotment  twenty  acres  of  raw  prairie  half  a  mile 
from  the  town  pump,  all  nicely  divided  into  town 
lots,  the  concrete  representation  of  all  the  fine 
dreams  and  high  hopes  of  an  impetuous  youth. 
With  the  town  lots  and  her  star  boarder,  Mrs. 
Kilworth  also  acquired  one  step-son,  Caleb,  aged 
five,  whom  she  took  up  as  her  cross.  But  if  Caleb 


74  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

was  her  cross,  little  Boyce,  ten  years  older,  was  his 
mother's  crown.  And  after  Winthrop  Hale  had 
wandered  off,  rather  inadvertently  and  entirely  in 
testate,  to  his  supernal  reward,  Boyce  Kilworth's 
mother  died  triumphant  in  the  blessed  knowledge 
that  her  son,  just  turning  twenty,  would  have  a 
little  property  in  his  own  right,  and  was  almost 
ready  to  run  for  a  county  office  of  honour  and 
profit. 

Two  fundamental  principles  she  had  dinned  into 
him  until  they  were  part  of  his  nature :  First,  you 
must  be  respectable ;  second,  you  must  get  on  in  the 
world — ("on,"  being  translated,  meant  prop 
erty —  your  own  property).  When  as  a  youth 
in  his  teens  he  had  prepared  the  clerk's  roll  with 
bogus  names  and  had  been  an  accessory  before  the 
fact  of  the  ballot  box  stuffing  that  brought  New 
Raynham  the  county  seat,  sympathy  for  him  as  an 
exemplary  son  of  an  exemplary  mother  kept  the 
rival  town  from  pushing  the  case  against  him.  A 
few  years  later  when  it  was  found  that,  as  county 
treasurer,  he  was  lending  the  county's  money  and 
appropriating  the  interest  to  himself,  the  fact  that 
the  loans  he  made  were  good  loans,  all  to  respect 
able  people,  and  all  paid  in  full,  gave  Judge  Lad- 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "          75 

gett  of  the  district  bench  an  excuse  for  quashing 
the  indictment  against  Boyce  Kilworth.  And  not 
one  session  did  he  miss  as  superintendent  of  his 
Sunday  School  while  the  action  was  pending 
against  him.  Always  he  was  respectable;  always 
he  got  on.  He  went  from  the  county  treasurer's 
office  into  a  bank  that  he  owned  within  three  years 
after  he  helped  to  start  it,  and  from  the  first  day 
of  his  ownership  until  the  day  he  died  he  was  Emi 
nently  Respectable. 

Which  was  more  than  ever  could  be  said  of  his 
step-brother,  Caleb  Hale.  The  Winthrops  and 
the  Hales  took  the  orphaned  Caleb  back  to  New 
England,  sent  him  through  Phillips  Exeter  Aca 
demy,  schooled  him  at  Harvard,  and  then,  having 
visions  of  the  wealth  that  Winthrop  Hale  had  left 
in  the  town  lots  in  the  growing  village  of  New 
Raynham,  they  shipped  young  Hale  west,  with  his 
Harvard  degree  and  a  ticket  to  the  scene  of  his 
father's  glory.  The  pious  letters  of  his  step 
brother  had  built  Caleb's  hopes  high.  But  when 
he  sought  to  realise  on  his  hopes,  he  found  that  a 
perfectly  balanced  statement  of  the  assets  and  lia 
bilities,  income  and  expenditures,  gains  and  losses, 
of  the  Hale  estate  was  all  that  Boyce  Kilworth 


76  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

had  to  show  for  their  joint  patrimony.  And  the 
impetuous,  unparliamentary  language  of  youth, 
rashly  cast  at  his  step-brother,  was  all  the  satisfac 
tion  Caleb  Hale  had  in  return  for  his  loss  —  that 
and  a  rather  frigid  esteem  for  all  Sunday-school 
superintendents. 

But  Boyce  Kilworth  made  a  point  —  an  excla 
mation  point,  as  it  were  —  of  publicly  forgiving 
Caleb  for  his  sneers  and  slurs,  and  went  on  suf 
fering  in  silence  and  selling  the  Winthrop  Hale 
lots  in  secret  in  Joel  Ladgett's  name,  thus  showing 
to  a  sinful  world  how  the  righteous  prosper. 
Young  Charley  Herrington  at  one  time  had  more 
money  than  Boyce  Kilworth,  but  never  was  so 
Eminently  Respectable.  Colonel  Longford  made 
fun  of  Boyce  Kilworth's  celluloid  collars,  his 
ready-made  ties,  his  clothes  five  years  behind  the 
mode,  his  occasional  lapses  into  have-sawisms  of 
speech  and  manners;  but  with  all  Colonel  Long 
ford's  learning,  with  all  his  ease  and  grace  of  bear 
ing  —  he  did  serve  toddy  to  his  guests,  he  did  let 
his  past  due  paper  accumulate  in  the  banks,  occa 
sionally  was  sued,  and  was  suspected  of  bearing 
something  more  than  a  widower's  gallantry  in  his 
attentions  to  the  sex.  So  the  Colonel  was  not 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "          77 

Eminently  Respectable.  And  as  for  Boyce's  step 
brother,  Caleb  Hale,  for  all  his  New  England 
lineage,  for  all  his  exact  sartorial  regularity,  for 
all  his  Harvard  degree,  he  gambled  —  gambled 
at  cards  while  the  whole  town  was  debauching 
itself  gambling  in  real  estate  —  and  that  was  the 
end  of  him.  But  Boyce  Kilworth  got  on  with 
Eminent  Respectability. 

Naturally,  when  Boyce  Kilworth  married  he 
married  property.  "  He  worships  it,"  laughed 
Caleb  Hale,  comfortably  drunk  for  the  wedding; 
"  so  why  not  marry  it?  And  if  he  gets  a  pretty 
girl  in  the  bargain  —  well  and  good."  She  was 
a  pretty  girl,  was  Matilda  Venable,  and  it  was  she 
who  gave  him  his  first  taste  for  omnipotence. 
He  picked  out  all  the  furniture  for  their  home  — 
the  kitchen  furniture,  the  table  linen,  the  bedding, 
the  carpets  for  the  front  room  • —  and  bought  her 
kitchen  apron  with  the  outfit.  After  that  he 
bought  her  dresses,  bought  her  underwear,  and 
when  the  babies  began  to  come  he  sent  home  the 
muslin  and  linen  from  which  she  made  the  little 
things  after  patterns  Boyce  selected.  And,  be 
ing  a  banker  —  the  only  banker  in  the  town  with 
out  a  past  —  and  having  developed  a  talent  as  a 


78  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

Providence  for  his  family,  the  town  came  under 
his  sphere  of  influence  and  he  became  the  Provi 
dence  of  New  Raynham;  this  before  he  was  thirty- 
five. 

Boyce  Kilworth  was  the  Commercial  Club; 
gradually  he  assumed  the  functions  of  his  party 
conventions  in  the  town  and  county  and  congres 
sional  district;  he  built  the  Methodist  Church, 
bought  the  organ  —  paying  his  share  of  the  bills, 
naturally,  but  not  much  more  —  was  chairman  of 
the  Public  Library  Committee,  president  of  the 
Humane  Society,  chief  stockholder  by  virtue  of  his 
promoting  ability  of  the  Brick  and  Tile  Company, 
the  Canning  Company,  the  Fair  Association,  and 
even  the  Gun  Club.  And  Boyce  Kilworth  made  all 
these  things  go.  He  was  tireless,  and  as  he  grew 
into  his  late  thirties  he  became  effective.  In  other 
towns  there  was  a  general  complaint  that  the  Com 
mercial  Club  did  nothing.  In  other  towns  men 
were  forever  buying  stock  in  enterprises  that  were 
supposed  to  help  the  town,  and  the  enterprises 
failed.  In  other  towns  near  New  Raynham  the 
Committee  on  Industries  got  nothing  more  impor 
tant  than  a  coffin  factory  or  a  planing  mill  or  a 
buggy  and  carriage  works  —  miserable  little  two 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "         79 

or  three  men  affairs  that  always  had  to  be  stimu 
lated  by  assessments  of  the  stockholders,  and  then 
finally  moved  away.  But  the  things  that  Boyce 
Kilworth  brought  to  New  Raynham  thrived  and 
stayed.  And  incidentally  it  was  found  that  Boyce 
owned  either  a  majority  of  the  stock  or  a  con 
trolling  minority,  and  reaped  his  reward  in  sub 
stantial  things.  He  horned  young  Charley  Her- 
rington  so  completely  out  of  the  local  financial 
situation  that  Herrington  took  his  talents  to  other 
fields  and  only  used  the  Herrington  bank  as  a  fi 
nancial  coaling  station.  So  the  two  financiers 
hated  each  other  with  a  low,  steady  voltage,  lied 
casually  about  each  other,  and  sneered  at  each 
other  in  private,  letting  it  go  at  these  amiable 
amenities. 

Three  little  Kilworth  girls  in  very  stiff  pigtails 
and  very  stiff  petticoats  and  very  high  noses  rode 
with  their  fond  parents  to  Sunday  School  every 
Sunday  morning  in  a  family  surrey  of  great  price. 
A  tall,  pompous,  heavy-jowled,  bearded  man  was 
Boyce  Kilworth  in  his  thirties;  black  as  to  whis 
kers,  and  ponderous;  black  as  to  hair  and  eyes, 
deep  voiced,  slow-spoken,  and  sententious.  "  Yell 
at  Brother  Boyce,"  hooted  Caleb  Hale,  "  and  if  he 


8o  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

forgets  himself  he'll  say  '  I  seen.'  So  he  takes  it 
slow." 

Profoundly  impressed  with  the  conventions  was 
Boyce  Kilworth;  vastly,  elaborately,  and  creak- 
ingly  polite  was  he  to  "  the  ladies,"  and  all  women 
were  "ladies"  with  him.  He  gave  the  impres 
sion  of  a  knight  in  a  full  stock  of  armour,  shelf 
goods,  and  general  hardware  when  a  woman  hove 
in  sight,  and  with  the  stiffness  of  his  bowing  and 
scraping  one  felt  that  his  armour  was  new  and 
needed  oil.  At  home  Mrs.  Kilworth  lived  in  an 
attitude  of  devotion,  with  hands  clasped  on  her 
bosom,  when  Boyce  was  about.  In  the  bank, 
when  they  heard  his  keys  jingling  in  the  back  door 
at  seven-thirty  every  morning,  the  bank  began 
to  turn  on  its  stools  and  chairs,  and  ledger  leaves 
began  to  rustle  audibly,  and  in  town  no  one  cared 
to  tempt  Providence  by  a  jibe  —  no  one  but  Caleb 
Hale. 

In  the  midst  of  the  shabbily  pretentious  lobby 
of  the  Astor  House  was  a  double-faced  writing 
desk;  and,  dividing  the  faces  of  the  desk,  rose 
a  gaudy  glass  screen.  In  the  screen  were  various 
advertisements  of  New  Raynham  business  houses, 
—  most  of  the  advertisements  sadly  out  of  date, 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"          81 

and  none  of  the  advertisements  so  sadly  out  of  date 
as  the  one  announcing  "  Caleb  Hale,  Stockman  — 
Dealer  in  Cattle,  Sheep,  and  Hogs,"  giving  the 
number  of  his  "  office  "  in  the  Herrington  block. 
For  it  was  known  of  all  the  town  that  the  "  cattle  " 
(and  he  did  deal  in  cattle),  the  "sheep"    (and 
many  a  poor  sheep  followed  blindly  its  leader  to 
Caleb's  shears),  and  finally  the  "hogs"    (many 
greedy  swine  looking  for  something  for  nothing) , 
were  of  the  two-legged  kind.     But  before  Caleb 
Hale  recognised  the  irony  of  his  sign  he  had  trav 
elled  a  long  and  devious  way  into  the  far  country. 
At  first  as  a  youth  fresh  from  Harvard,  with  a 
seven-devil  lust  for  betting  on  things,  taking  gay 
chances  on  anything  from  an  election  to  a  funeral 
procession,  Caleb  Hale  did  busy  himself  as  a  spec 
ulator  in  live  stock.     But  it  was  the  speculation, 
riot  the  live  stock,  that  interested  him;  he  bought 
cattle  in  such  large  quantities  that  for  a  few  years 
he  was  known  as  "  Trainload  Hale."     The  big 
winnings  and  the  big  losses  built  up  a  passion  in 
him  for  gambling,  and  he  began  keeping  a  poker 
table  with  its  equipment  in  his  office  for  his  friends 
among  the  stockmen.     His  office  was  a  loafing 
place  for  stock-growers  from  a  dozen  counties, 


82  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

and  when  the  market  game  grew  dull  and  dreary 
Caleb  added  roulette  for  the  diversion  of  his 
friends.  Gradually  he  found  that  poker  offered 
more  excitement  than  stock  buying,  so  he  let  busi 
ness  slump.  In  the  beginning  he  excused  himself 
because  the  market  was  hysterical  and  unprofitable. 
At  first  he  had  a  pretence  that  he  allowed  no  one 
but  stock  buyers  in  his  room  —  and  of  course  a 
few  particular  friends.  But  as  the  mania  for 
gambling  held  him  tighter  and  tighter,  his  "  par 
ticular  friends  "  increased,  and  the  time  came  when 
the  right  kind  of  a  knock  would  make  any  man 
Caleb  Hale's  "  particular  friend.'*  And  only  the 
stockman's  wide  white  hat,  the  stockman's  flannel 
shirt,  and  the  stockman's  grey  tweed  clothes  of  the 
period  gave  Caleb  Hale  an  excuse  for  keeping  up 
his  pretence  that  he  was  a  stockman.  But  even 
then  he  kept  the  daily  telegraphic  report  of  the 
stock  market  posted  above  his  faro  table.  Dap 
per,  smooth-shaven,  flaxen-haired;  of  mobile  fea 
tures,  and  with  a  quick,  sensitive  blue  eye ;  a  good 
boxer,  a  welterweight  athlete;  fond  of  books  and 
Colonel  Longford;  fond  of  horses  and  Charley 
Herrington;  fond  of  women  and  constrained  to 
"  neither  east  nor  west  nor  border  nor  breed  nor 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "          83 

birth  "  in  his  choice;  fond  of  a  flute  in  a  summer's 
twilight,  and  patron  royal  of  those  bands  of  stroll 
ing  Italians,  with  harp  and  violin  and  cello,  that 
once  infested  Western  America;  quick  tempered; 
soft-spoken  and  merciless  in  a  game  —  such  was 
Caleb  Hale  at  thirty  —  the  Caleb  Hale  who 
wooed  Vashti  Sellers,  the  compositor  in  the 
Globe-Times  office.  Wooing  was  no  novelty  for 
Vashti.  Her  love  affairs  the  office  counted  as 
the  sands  of  the  sea.  But  this  particular  court 
ship  had  the  gorgeous  distinction  of  being  the 
scandal  of  the  Globe  office.  The  other  girl  prin 
ters  with  fathers  and  mothers  to  warn  them  were 
inclined  to  draw  their  skirts  about  them  a  little  at 
Vashti  in  the  midst  of  this  particular  young  dream 
of  love.  The  foreman's  wife  —  only  a  year  from 
the  composing  room  herself  —  tried  to  talk  to 
Vashti  about  Caleb,  to  tell  her  of  half  a  dozen 
other  girls  who  had  flown  into  the  light  of  his 
countenance  like  moths.  But  she  would  shake  her 
head  and  smile  sometimes,  and  shake  her  head 
and  cry  at  other  times,  but  always  would  shake 
her  head.  And  just  when  the  rattle  of  his  red- 
wheeled  cart  near  where  Vashti  lived,  was  waking 
the  neighbours  far  after  midnight,  just  when  her 


84  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

printer's  proofs  by  day  were  so  full  of  errors  that 
it  took  more  time  to  correct  the  proofs  than  to  set 
the  type,  just  as  the  stones  of  her  relations  with 
Caleb  Hale  had  become  so  common  that  she  found 
herself  walking  alone  on  the  streets,  just  as  the 
spring  rush  of  work  was  making  it  almost  im 
possible  to  discharge  her  on  any  but  an  obvious 
pretext  —  Caleb  Hale  married  her.  And  he  mar 
ried  her  largely  because  she  was  a  challenge.  He 
took  the  bet  that  her  red  lips,  her  pink  cheeks, 
her  gorgeous  figure,  her  bright,  animal  eyes  — 
in  truth,  the  bet  that  the  whole  physical  lure  of 
her  made  with  his  common  sense :  That  he  would 
be  miserable  with  her  when  he  got  her.  And  be 
cause  he  had  made  the  bet  with  his  eyes  open,  be 
cause  he  knew  the  value  of  the  stake,  he  held  it  a 
point  of  honour  never  to  welsh  on  that  bet  and 
never  to  whine  about  it.  Their  baby  was  born 
for  their  Christmas  present,  and  that  bound  the 
bargain  with  Caleb  Hale.  Their  life  together 
was  long,  stormy,  often  tempestuous,  but  Caleb 
Hale's  soul  never  listed  to  port  and  never  sheathed 
a  sail.  If  the  gaudy  plumage  she  affected,  the 
rampant  colours  that  she  loved,  the  pretensions  of 
the  clothes  she  piled  on,  ever  sickened  him,  no 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "          85 

one  —  not  even  Colonel  Longford  in  the  most 
intimate  moments  of  their  boon  companionship  — 
ever  had  a  hint  of  Caleb's  disgust  or  the  remote 
basis  for  a  guess  at  it.  It  may  be  said  in  passing, 
however,  that  the  colonel,  in  his  hours  of  ease  at 
the  Globe  office,  used  to  indicate  that  he  was  living 
in  lively  anticipation  of  the  sad  day  when  Caleb 
would  have  to  go  out  and  kill  some  man  as  a  slight 
return  for  Vashti's  foolishness. 

At  first  the  Hales  lived  in  one  of  the  sharp- 
gabled,  bow-windowed,  turreted,  wooden  houses  in 
a  row  far  out  among  the  saplings  where  Caleb 
could  have  a  garden,  which  was  his  heart's  desire. 
As  they  paid  their  rent  a  year  in  advance  and  made 
their  own  repairs,  and  as  Caleb  was  planting  a 
maze  of  shrubs  and  hardy  annuals  about  the  place, 
improving  it  greatly,  the  complaint  about  the  in 
vasion  of  the  neighbourhood  by  an  undesirable 
family  achieved  no  result  with  the  agent  of  the 
Boyce  Investment  Company  at  the  Traders'  Na 
tional  Bank.  Caleb  Hale,  moving  among  men  as 
a  gay  young  blade  with  a  past  that  projected  itself 
well  into  the  future,  had  felt  little  of  society's  dis 
approval.  He  knew  that  the  neighbours  had  com 
plained  when  he  moved  among  them  with  his  bride, 


86  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

but  it  amused  him,  and  Vashti  was  too  busy  with 
her  grand  furniture  and  her  baby  clothes  to  care 
much  what  the  neighbours  thought.  But  by  the 
time  the  baby  was  two  years  old  Caleb  Hale  began 
to  feel  the  prick  of  the  neighbourhood's  disap 
proval.  Vashti  complained  that  when  she  was 
wheeling  the  little  one  along  the  sidewalk  mothers 
called  in  their  children;  that  when  she  took  little 
Dick  out  for  a  walk,  and  he  toddled  into  a  neigh 
bour's  yard  or  ran  away  up  the  steps  of  a  neigh 
bouring  house,  doors  were  barred  against  him ;  no 
kindly  hand  led  him  back  to  her.  He  was  put  off 
the  porch  and  started  home,  and  left  to  his  own 
devices.  A  day  came  when  Vashti  told  Caleb  that 
a  child  in  the  block  had  referred  to  the  little  fellow 
as  "  the  gambler's  boy."  So  twice  in  a  year  Caleb 
left  a  garden  and  moved  his  household  goods,  but 
each  neighbourhood  was  like  the  other  neighbour 
hood,  and  as  the  child  grew  older  the  father  be 
gan  to  fear  that  the  little  fellow  would  feel  his 
isolation.  Caleb  cluttered  the  child  about  with  a 
wilderness  of  toys  —  toys  that  other  children's 
parents  could  not  afford.  But  little  Dick  often 
would  lay  them  down  to  run  vainly  after  the  other 
children,  or,  playing  with  the  toys,  would  look 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "          87 

up  to  see  a  group  of  children  looking  at  him  in 
envy,  but  askance.  And  Vashti  grew  petulant  — 
and  probably  mean.  So  they  wrangled  —  man 
and  wife  —  and  the  little  fellow's  heart  was  hurt. 
Caleb,  bound  to  his  Puritan  training,  felt  the 
moral  responsibility  of  parenthood  upon  him,  and 
began  teaching  little  Dick  the  rudiments  of  a  code. 
But  he  had  to  gulp  his  own  shortcomings  that  rose 
within  him,  and  his  Yankee  self-respect  was 
wounded.  The  low  esteem  in  which  he  held  his 
step-brother  had  been  a  cherished  jewel  in  his 
moral  crown  until  he  saw  the  little  pig-tailed  Kil- 
worth  girls  going  by  to  Sunday  School.  In  spite  of 
all  his  carping,  he  did  want  little  Dick  to  go  to  Sun 
day  School.  The  Kilworth's  could  go  to  Sunday 
School;  little  Dick  in  the  nature  of  things  did  not 
go  to  Sunday  School;  there  was  an  inequality  that 
galled  him.  After  a  session  with  little  Dick,  an 
swering  the  child's  questions,  and  knowing  that  a 
day  would  come  when  the  growing  child  would  be 
ashamed  to  ask  the  questions  that  went  to  the  quick 
in  the  father's  heart,  it  took  three  man's-size 
drinks  at  the  sideboard  in  his  "  office  "  to  restore 
Caleb  Hale's  equanimity.  So  he  tried  to  pickle 
a  certain  area  of  his  self-respect  in  liquor,  and  the 


88  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

pickling  roiled  the  soul  of  Vashti,  who  had  no 
idea  of  letting  liquor  get  the  better  of  her  husband, 
and  as  she  was  a  strong  woman  beneath  her  vain 
surface,  Caleb  Hale's  way  lay  among  thorns. 
Men  on  Constitution  Street  said,  "  Hale  is  drink 
ing  too  much."  This  hurt  his  standing  among 
men  more  than  his  profession  hurt  it. 

It  was  a  bright  May  morning,  and  late  enough 
for  Colonel  Longford,  who  was  of  a  sedentary 
habit,  to  be  down  on  Constitution  Street  shed 
ding  the  light  of  his  fine  Irish  countenance  on  the 
town,  when  Caleb  Hale  came  hurrying  along.  Al 
ways  he  walked  as  if  he  were  going  to  some  par 
ticular  place  on  an  appointment  a  few  minutes 
overdue,  but  the  Colonel  knew  better,  and 
stretched  out  the  hook  of  a  great  arm  and  dragged 
the  little  man  into  a  group. 

"  Shake  hands  with  Brother  Boyce  here,  Cale," 
roared  the  Colonel.  "  Another  girl;  four  now  — 
four  queens:  a  pretty  good  hand  to  fill  to,  eh, 
Cale?" 

Kilworth  reached  down  a  cold  hand,  and  the 
gambler  shook  it  with  all  the  fervour  of  a  man 
weighing  a  pound  of  snakes.  The  banker  looked 
knowingly  at  the  Colonel,  and  began:  "  Colonel 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "          89 

—  can't  we  get  him  to  quit  —  to  get  into  some 
other  calling?  " 

Hale  flushed  angrily,  and  the  Colonel  put  out  a 
quieting  hand : 

"  Steady,  Caleb  — •  steady,  my  boy,"  and  being 
encouraged,  Kilworth  let  his  soft,  ingratiating 
voice  saw  its  way  into  the  gambler's  heart : 

"  Colonel,  here  we  have  a  smart  man  —  a  very 
smart  man,  Colonel- — who  is  wasting  his  time 
and  talents  —  and  worse,  Colonel  —  and  worse. 
Why,  let  me  tell  you,  Colonel  — " 

Caleb  tried  to  wriggle  out  of  the  Colonel's 
grasp,  but  the  older  man  held  him,  while  the 
banker  went  on:  "  He's  moved  three  times  since 
he  was  married — -and  why?  It's  his  peculiar 
business,  Colonel,  and  the  neighbours.  That's 
why.  And  moving  costs  money.  I  tell  you  it 
cuts  down  his  profits  —  such  as  they  are !  " 

The  Colonel  looked  a  question,  and  Caleb,  white 
with  wrath,  stood  trying  to  pierce  the  bland,  dead- 
black  eyes  of  Kilworth,  with  the  steel-blue  eyes 
that  had  shot  terror  into  many  another  soul. 
"  Colonel,"  asked  Kilworth  unctuously,  "  can't  we 
get  him  into  something  more  regular?  " 

Hale    stuck    out    his   lean    jaw    and    replied: 


90  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

"  The  difference  between  us,  Brother  Boyce,  being, 
of  course,  that  I  give  them  a  chance,  and  you  rob 
them  without  it.  I  gamble,  run  a  straight  game, 
take  my  percentage,  win  or  lose,  and  you  charge 
two  per  cent,  a  month  to  the  poor,  seven  per  cent, 
a  year  when  you  can,  and  six  per  cent,  to  the  rich ! 
I  guess  it's  about  an  even  break." 

Kilworth  turned  away,  calling  back :  "  Talk  to 
him,  Colonel  —  you  understand  poor  Caleb  even 
better  than  I." 

Looking  at  the  portly  figure  disappearing  in  the 
bank  door,  Caleb  Hale  sneered:  "The  psalm- 
singing,  canting  hypocrite !  "  But  the  Colonel 
said:  "  I'm  sorry,  Cale,  that  it  happened,"  as  he 
pressed  the  quivering  arm  he  held  kindly.  "  And 
now,  Cale,  tell  me  —  what  about  that  moving?" 

"  It's  the  boy,  Colonel,  and  the  long-nosed  she- 
pelicans;  they're  jealous  of  all  his  toys,"  returned 
Hale  bitterly.  "  They  won't  let  their  children 
play  with  him." 

The  two  men  walked  down  the  street,  and  the 
Colonel  said  artlessly:  "  Pretty  fine  boy  that  — 
your  little  Dick."  The  father  smiled  acquiescence. 
"  Good  blood  in  him !  Good  New  England 
blood,  Cale,"  the  Colonel  persisted.  Then  he 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"          91 

added:  "He  ought  to  have  his  chance  —  the 
best  chance  in  the  world,  Cale." 

The  Colonel's  words  touched  to  the  quick  the 
gambler's  heart.  He  turned  to  the  older  man  and 
burst  forth :  "  He'll  be  four  years  old  next 
Christmas,  Colonel.  Not  a  day  has  passed  in 
those  years  that  I  haven't  had  that  on  me  —  all 
the  time !  " 

They  walked  in  silence  for  a  minute;  then  the 
Colonel  screwed  up  his  courage  to  say  softly: 
"  Cale  —  Cale,  my  boy,  they're  not  jealous  of  the 
boy's  toys,  those  mothers;  we  both  know  better 
than  that." 

They  had  come  to  the  stairway  leading  to  Hale's 
gambling  room.  The  Colonel  shook  his  head  and 
stood  hesitating  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs :  when  he 
looked  up  he  found  the  keen,  blue  eyes  of  Hale 
looking  into  the  bearded  old  face. 

'*  They're  not  caring  about  his  toys,  Cale,"  the 
Colonel  spoke  gently,  and  then  said:  "It's  be 
cause  he's  the  gambler's  son." 

Their  eyes  met  for  a  moment,  and  the  Colonel 
touched  the  gambler's  arm  fondly,  and  his  voice 
had  in  it  the  affection  one  shows  only  to  the  well- 
beloved  as  he  added: 


92  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

"  Well,  think  it  over,  Cale,  anyway." 

The  younger  face  reddened,  and  the  hard,  mean 
voice  of  Caleb  Hale  cut  back  miserably:  "  So 
it's  you,  too  —  you  too!  "  and  he  ran  quickly  up 
the  stairs. 

But  all  day  and  all  night  the  words  "  The 
gambler's  son  "  burned  into  him.  And  the  deeply 
affectionate,  uplifted  face  of  the  old  Colonel  stared 
at  Caleb  from  the  cards.  About  midnight  he  no 
ticed  that  an  old  man  who  had  been  losing  more 
or  less  steadily  —  an  old  man  of  a  miner's  cast  of 
face  —  was  trying  to  put  up  as  stakes  some  kind 
of  a  paper.  Caleb  walked  over  to  the  table, 
picked  up  the  document,  and  looked  it  over,  but  the 
words  "  The  Son  of  a  Gamboleer  "  jumped  out 
at  him  from  the  paper.  He  held  himself  from 
starting  visibly.  Then  cried  sharply:  "What's 
this?" 

"  A  deed  to  my  mine,  in  El  Paso  County,  Colo 
rado,"  replied  the  man.  "  Do  you  want  it  for  — 
for  five  hundred?  " 

Hale  smiled  and  shook  his  head,  then  asked: 
"What's  it  worth?" 

"  They  offered  me  eight  hundred  for  it  out 
there  last  week." 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "          93 

"  How  much  are  you  to  the  bad  to-night  here, 
grandpa?"  queried  the  gambler,  looking  at  the 
excited  old  face  and  fluttering  hands. 

"  Well,  I  think  —  let  me  see  —  ninety-seven 
and  a  half  will  cover  it." 

"  Better  get  up  from  there,"  replied  Hale. 
"  Come  over  here.  I'll  give  you  a  thousand  dol 
lars  for  this.  I  might  as  well  buy  it  as  anything 
else.  Where'd  you  get  that  name  ?  " 

"  What  ?     '  The  Son  of  a  Gamboleer  '  ?  " 

Caleb  nodded. 

"  Oh,  I  dunno.  That's  what  the  feller  who 
prospected  it  called  it.  I  traded  him  two  burros 
and  a  side  of  bacon  for  it  last  fall,  and  run  a  tun 
nel  myself  this  winter.  It's  near  some  good  work 
ings!" 

Hale  looked  at  the  old  man,  who  seemed 
fearful  lest  his  customer  should  slip  away  from 
him. 

The  old  man  persisted:  "Have  your  lawyer 
look  it  over.  I  ain't  in  no  hurry." 

"Oh,  to  the  devil—"  began  Hale.  "You 
look  honester  than  any  lawyer.  I  just  got  this 
hunch,  and  I'm  going  to  risk  it." 

The  man  rose. 


94  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

"  Now  sail  out  of  here,  and  come  up  in  the 
morning  and  we'll  make  out  the  papers." 

But  Hale  woke  in  the  morning  with  rage  in  his 
heart  —  rage  and  a  strange  feeling  of  unrest  and 
reproach  against  the  world.  The  prattle  of  the 
youngster  irritated  the  father,  and  he  shuddered 
away  from  the  child  guiltily.  The  ancient  col 
lege  song  with  the  refrain:  "  I'm  a  son-of-a-son- 
of-a-son-of-a-son-of-a-son-of-a-gamboleer "  stuck 
in  the  man's  head  and  became  fixed.  Every  suc 
cession  of  sounds  fell  into  the  rhythm  that  called 
up  that  tune,  and  it  poured  gall  into  his  heart.  As 
he  shaved  he  broke  into  the  song,  hating  himself 
for  his  weakness,  and  little  Dick,  sitting  in  his 
nightie  watching  his  father  as  a  lower  creature 
adoring  one  of  the  high  gods  at  sacred  rites, 
asked: 

"  Daddy,  what  is  a  gamboleer?  " 

And  when  the  child  insisted  on  an  answer  the 
father  put  him  off,  and  the  mother  from  the  bed 
room  cried  tauntingly : 

"Why  don't  you  tell  the  boy,  Cale?  I'd  tell 
him  if  I  was  you." 

Then  the  devil  stalked  forth  in  that  house  and 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "          95 

the  husband  went  out  after  breakfast  slamming  the 
door  behind  him. 

But  Boyce  Kilworth,  being  of  the  elect  and 
anointed,  had  no  such  tempestuous  moments  as 
these  in  his  life.  He  had,  of  course,  an  occasional 
perplexity  over  the  prosperity  of  the  sinful,  but 
the  banker  brushed  the  cobwebs  of  his  perplexity 
aside  as  he  entered  his  holy  temple  every  morn 
ing  and  sat  down  to  his  desk.  He  got  out  his  in 
terest  book  —  a  well-thumbed  Bible  it  was  —  and 
began  to  estimate  how  much  he  should  put  on  time 
deposit  to  be  compounded  annually  for  his  newest 
little  daughter's  dower  to  make  hers  exactly  equal 
to  the  sums  the  other  girls  had.  When  Esther 
came  she  had  a  hundred,  and  at  compound  interest 
two  years  and  three  months  and  fourteen  days 
later  it  had  earned  $13.47.  The  enlarged  sum 
he  placed  to  Ruth's  account  the  day  she  was  born 
and  later  a  similar  amount  to  Mary's.  And  now 
eighteen  months  later  he  must  start  little  Deborah 
equal  with  the  others,  and  it  gave  him  a  thrill  of 
pleasure  to  dream  how  much  it  would  be  when  she 
was  twenty-one  —  how  much  each  of  the  girls 
would  have !  So  he  sent  in  the  deposit  slip,  made 


96  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

out  a  bank  book  for  little  Deborah,  and  turned  to 
the  business  of  the  hour.     It  was  the  new  tin  mill 

—  a  kind  of  a  woodshed  industry.     Two  men  and 
a  boy  were  running  the  plant,  and  they  owed  the 
bank  $4,450  for  their  machinery,  and  were  getting 
in  deeper  every  month.     Still,  the  book  profits 
were  there  and  money  was  comfortably  loose,  so 
he  decided  to  risk  another  month's  losses ;  for  the 
gain,  if  profits  should  accrue,  would  be  large,  and 
if  they  failed  he  could,  of  course,  unload  the  con 
cern  upon  the  bank.     After  he  had  gone  over  the 
month's  business  with  the  owner  of  the  machinery 

—  or  the  man  who  thought  he  would  be  owner  — 
Kilworth  stalked  forth  to  pervade   Constitution 
Street,  walking  with  a  wide,  swinging  movement 
from  his  hips.     He  met  Colonel  Longford  just 
turning  into  the  stairway  where  the  sign  "  Caleb 
Hale,  Stockman  —  Dealer  in  Cattle,  Sheep,  and 
Hogs,"  was  creaking  in  the  afternoon  breeze.     As 
Kilworth's  eyes  glanced  from  the  sign,  they  met 
Colonel  Longford's,  and  Kilworth  began : 

"  Ah,  Colonel  —  just  what  I've  been  thinking 
about  —  our  recent  talk  with  Caleb.  The  poor 
fellow  is  throwing  away  his  opportunities.  He's 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "          97 

not  developing  the  right  faculties.  He's  not  ac 
quisitive."  The  banker  put  a  patronising  arm  on 
the  Colonel's  shoulder.  "  Colonel,  it's  a  gift  — 
the  acquisitive  faculty.  I  turn  over  a  park  to  the 
city  that  cost  me  three  thousand,  and  make  five 
right  back  on  abutting  town  lots.  Caleb  is  wasting 
his  time;  he  should  learn  to  accumulate,  and  his 
peculiar  business  doesn't  teach  acquisitiveness.  I 
thank  God  he  has  given  me  this  acquisitive  faculty, 
and  that  I  am  not  like  other  men  who  — •" 

"  Well,  Boyce,"  laughed  the  Colonel  in  his  deep 
Irish  basso,  "  ye've  distinguished  Bible  precedent 
for  that  hosanna  —  I  dunno !  " 

"  Yes,  Colonel,  the  man  with  ten  talents  had  a 
gift  —  a  divine  gift,"  replied  Kilworth,  rubbing 
his  hands. 

"  So  he  had,  Boyce;  so  he  had,  but  I  wasn't 
thinking  of  that  Bible  character  when  I  spoke," 
answered  Colonel  Longford. 

"  The  Bible  is  full  of  men  of  affairs,  isn't  it?  " 
insisted  Kilworth,  and,  seeing  Longford's  foot  on 
the  stairs,  the  banker  went  on :  "  That's  good. 
Go  up  and  work  with  him.  There  were  ninety 
and  nine,  you  know,  Colonel!  " 


98  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

A  hard  glare  in  the  Colonel's  eyes  prodded  Kil- 
worth  uneasily,  and  he  asked:  "  That  was  what 
you  were  going  up  for,  I  presume?  " 

;<  Well,  you  presume  again,  Boyce  Kilworth," 
grunted  the  Colonel.  '  What  I  was  going  up  for, 
if  you  must  know,  was  to  get  the  enlargement  of 
your  phylacteries  out  of  my  eyes  and  the  scent  of 
your  anise  and  cumin  out  of  my  whiskers  with  a 
round  or  two  of  poker  and  a  big  snort  of  whiskey." 

In  the  room  above  when  the  Colonel  opened  the 
door  he  observed  that  business  had  scarcely  begun 
for  the  day.  A  three-handed  game  of  poker  was 
progressing  at  a  corner  table ;  the  man  at  the  faro 
table  was  toying  with  the  accoutrement,  and  half 
a  dozen  idlers  were  lounging  about  the  place  shuf 
fling  cards,  clicking  chips,  or  drinking.  Perched 
on  a  lookout  box  above  the  tables  sat  Caleb  Hale 
with  his  hat  pulled  over  his  eyes.  He  was  whit 
tling  on  his  finger  nails  with  a  pearl-handled  pen 
knife,  and  glooming  perceptibly.  His  eyes  turned 
toward  the  Colonel  —  the  hulking,  shaggy,  leonine 
old  figure  with  rollicking  blue  eyes  dancing  in  the 
merry  old  countenance  —  and  Hale's  glance 
dropped  again  to  his  fingers.  He  did  not  speak. 
The  Colonel  started  for  the  long  sideboard,  where 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "          99 

the  porter  in  a  white  apron  was  presiding,  but  the 
old  feet  seemed  to  turn  abruptly,  and  the  Colonel 
found  himself  before  the  lookout  stand  holding  up 
a  hand  to  Hale,  and  heard  himself  saying,  almost 
as  a  third  person :  "  Come  out  of  your  cave,  Cale. 
I'm  no  Pharisee.  I  don't  care  how  you  make  your 
money,  just  so  you  don't  hoard  the  damn  stuff  and 
let  it  mildew  the  heart  out  of  you.  Let's  have  a 
drink !  " 

"  Let's  don't !  "  replied  Caleb,  not  raising  his 
eyes  from  his  hands. 

Colonel  Longford  looked  up  keenly,  but  could 
not  meet  the  gambler's  downcast  eyes. 

"  Why?  What's  eating  on  you,  Cale?  "  asked 
the  Colonel. 

"What's  it  to  you?"  snarled  Hale.  The 
Colonel  put  out  his  hand,  touched  the  younger 
man's  knee  gently,  looked  a  moment  up  into  the 
distraught  face  in  silence,  and  turned  away,  say 
ing  softly:  "  I'm  sorry,  Cale  —  only  don't  think 
I'm  a  Pharisee,"  and  walked  to  the  sideboard. 

As  he  was  reaching  for  a  decanter  a  hand 
gripped  his  arm,  and  Hale  whirled  the  old  man 
about  and  walked  him  across  the  hall. 

"  Come  into  my  room  a  minute,"  said  Caleb, 


ioo  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

and  the  two  entered  a  dark  little  cubby-hole,  half 
bedroom  and  half  office.  Hale  raised  a  window 
shade  and  locked  the  door.  Then  he  stood  star 
ing  for  a  few  seconds  at  the  Colonel  in  woe 
and  despair,  before  he  threw  up  his  hands  and 
cried : 

"God  —  God!  Oh,  God  damn  my  soul! 
Look  at  me  —  a  cheating,  thieving,  tin-horn  gam 
bler!  Me!  Me,  who  had  a  mind  once!  " 

The  Colonel  started  to  put  a  soothing  arm  about 
the  lithe  little  figure,  but  Hale  shuddered  away. 

"Here  in  the  husks  —  here  among  swine! 
Here  lower  even  than  Boyce  Kilworth;  a  sneak,  a 
bloodsucker.  Oh,  God  —  God!  Maybe  there 
is  no  God  to  damn  my  soul  —  that's  the  hell  of 
it  all!  Maybe  there  is  no  God!  " 

He  fell  across  the  bed  in  a  tremble.  The 
Colonel  bent  gently  over  the  man,  found  a  chair, 
and  took  Caleb's  hand.  The  thin,  white  wiry 
fingers  lay  a  moment  in  the  big,  burly  hand  of  the 
elder  man,  then  another  big  hand  closed  over  the 
small  hand,  and  the  Colonel  began  patting  and 
stroking  it  gently,  saying  no  word.  A  deep 
tremor  shook  Caleb  Hale;  and  then  ne  wept  and 
wept  and  wept. 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"        101 

Finally  the  Colonel  was  startled  by  the  muffled 
voice  of  his  friend  stammering: 

"  Could  you  —  do  you  suppose  —  did  you  ever 

—  Oh,  Colonel  —  Colonel !     For  God's  sake  pray 

—  pray  for  me  !  " 

The  elder  man's  face  turned  blank.  Quickly 
his  mind  snapped  back  to  the  battle  field  of  Shiloh 
and  the  dusk  where  he  stood  beside  a  long  black 
trench  in  the  morass.  Even  the  chaplain  had  gone 
down  that  day.  The  Colonel  took  off  his  hat 
there  in  the  dirty,  sour-smelling  room  and  lifted 
up  his  face  and  whispered,  as  his  memory 
prompted  through  the  years :  "  Oh,  Lord,  for 
this  our  fallen  comrade  we  pray  thy  mercy  and 
grace.  Amen !  "  And  a  tear-stained,  wrenched 
old  countenance  dropped  on  his  chest  as  the  Colo 
nel  sat  down. 

"  Damn  it  all,  Cale,"  he  whimpered;  "  I've  got 
no  right  to  pray  for  you  or  any  one !  But  — " 
Here  he  punctuated  his  words  with  a  sob.  "  Boy 

—  boy  —  boy- — "   he  cried   shrilly;   "I'm   right 
here  to  knock  hell  out  of  the  first  man  who  tries 
to  preach  to  you  or  lead  you  astray." 

The  younger  man  nodded.  He  was  afraid  to 
try  his  voice.  Finally  he  rose  and  sat  mutely  on 


102  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

the  side  of  the  bed,  looking  at  the  floor  in  a 
kind  of  meditative  trance,  very  still,  while  his  life 
stretched  ahead  of  him  in  prophetic  review.  He 
started  to  speak  once,  but  did  not.  The  Colonel's 
eyes  were  closed,  and  his  molten  heart  was  cooling. 
Hale  walked  to  the  window  and  looked  into  the 
dirty  alley,  then  came  back,  touched  the  square  old 
shoulder  lightly,  and  said: 

"  Well,  Colonel,  it's  done  —  the  great  transac 
tion's  done."  He  smiled  down  into  the  big,  trou 
bled  face  and  went  on:  u  I'm  going  to  quit!  " 

The  Colonel's  face  glowed  in  a  warm  smile,  and 
Hale  cried  quickly:  "Will  you  forget  this,  Col 
onel?  Please  forget  it!  " 

Suddenly  the  old  form  rose,  the  old  arms  went 
out,  and  the  great  hands  clasped  the  small  white 
hands  at  the  younger  man's  side,  and  the  bull  voice 
of  the  Colonel  roared: 

"  No,  no,  no!  By  the  Eternal,  I'll  not  forget 
it  —  not  till  the  Lord  swaps  my  memory  for  the 
peace  that  passeth  understanding." 

Thus  with  clasped  hands,  the  two  men  stood  by 
the  window  looking  into  the  alley,  and  from  the 
filth  below  rose  a  pathway  to  the  stars  for  both 
their  eyes. 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "        103 

The  next  day,  when  the  story  of  the  closing  of 
Caleb  Hale's  gambling  room  was  in  many  mouths 

—  Caleb  Hale  shook  the  dust  of  the  town  from 
his   feet.     Every   association   of  New   Raynham 
sickened  him.     He  hungered  for  a  new  environ 
ment,  and  partly  following  the  gambler's  supersti 
tion  that  luck  lay  in  the  mine,  and  partly  because 
the  mine  was  the  only  thing  on  earth  he  could  call 
his  own  with  even  tolerable  honesty,  he  turned 
blindly  to  Cripple  Creek.     Now,   Cripple  Creek 
a  generation  ago  was  the  capital  of  the  wildest 
mining  district  in  the  world.      From  all  over  the 
earth  men  were  hurrying  there  with  golden  dreams 

—  dreams   of  cheating  Providence  by  obtaining 
through  sheer  luck  that  empty  mastery  over  men 
and  events  and  destiny  that  money  seems  to  be 
stow.    So  Cripple  Creek,  where  ten  thousand  men 
were  assembling  with  no  thought  but  each  for  him 
self,  was  as  near  the  depths  of  the  lowest  hell  as  a 
place  often  gets  in  this  world.     Into  this  mael 
strom  of  ravenous  selfishness  —  cruel  as  war  and 
merciless  as  avarice  —  came  Caleb  Hale,  with  a 
deed  to  a  prospect  hole  that  punctured  a  slice  of  a 
golden  mountain.     And  no  Childe  Roland  to  a 
darker  tower  ever  came.     At  first  the  very  gross- 


104  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

ness  of  the  gambling  protected  Hale.  He  knew  it 
was  gambling.  Every  transaction  of  the  day  about 
him  he  knew  was  a  bet,  and  he  avoided  it.  By 
way  of  penance  he  took  two  men  out  on  to  his 
mountain,  tried  building  a  cabin  where  they  might 
work  with  him,  and  thought  in  some  vague  imprac 
tical  way  that  he  would  be  a  pick-and-shovel  miner. 
But  he  found  that  he  was  not  bred  for  the  job, 
and  while  his  cabin  was  slowly  going  up  the  thou 
sands  of  gopher  holes  pocking  the  mountain-sides 
were  coming  closer  and  closer  to  him,  and  the 
proved  area  of  paying  ore  was  edging  week  by 
week  nearer  to  Hale's  claim.  One  day  a  great 
seam  of  gold  almost  lewd  in  its  richness  was  un 
covered,  directly  across  the  gulch  from  Hale's 
cabin.  That  night  the  whole  district  got  blind- 
drunk  —  some  with  whiskey,  some  with  gold,  and 
some  with  the  heat  of  the  game  —  and  they  of 
fered  Hale  fifty  thousand  dollars  for  his  claim. 
But  the  lithe,  steely-eyed  little  man  in  gray  tweed, 
with  his  white  hat,  shading  a  hard  face,  wrinkling 
even  in  its  thirties,  shook  his  head,  trudged  over 
to  his  cabin,  and  went  to  bed. 

"  It  was  not,"  he  wrote  to  the  Colonel  that  night 
by  his  kerosene  lamp,  "  because  I  think  I  can  get 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "        105 

more  —  I  know  it's  not  worth  that  —  but  I  know 
Caleb  Hale.  If  he  had  that  much  money  in  cash, 
all  the  devils  from  the  pit  would  be  pulling  him 
into  this  fiendish  game.  I  invested  some  money 
here  six  months  ago,  in  a  few  little  houses  in  the 
residence  part  of  town  —  in  what  seemed  to 
be  a  legitimate  investment  —  and  now  they  have 
doubled  and  trebled  in  value,  and  as  rents  have 
mounted  I  am  having  other  little  houses  crowded 
into  the  vacant  spaces  between  the  first  houses. 
I've  got  to  a  point  now  where  I  can  walk  through 
the  Board  of  Trade  and  the  poker  rooms  without 
having  to  grab  my  pockets  and  run.  But  that's 
because  my  stake  is  small ;  I  know  my  size  —  fifty 
thousand  would  get  me." 

Three  months  later  when  the  great  shaft  house 
had  risen  across  the  gulch  and  the  Golden  Circle 
was  shipping  ore,  men  knew  that  the  flint-visaged 
little  man  whom  Cripple  Creek  tradition  had 
marked  as  the  gambler  of  New  Raynham  had  re 
fused  in  the  calm  course  of  things  first  one  hundred 
thousand  and  then  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
dollars  for  his  claim. 

New  Raynham  knew  it  too.  Charley  Her- 
rington  had  come  out  to  Cripple  Creek  in  his 


io6  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

private  car  expressly  to  advise  Caleb  to  sell  the 
claim  —  and  lend  Herrington  the  money.  Boyce 
Kilworth  had  written  Hale  a  long,  friendly,  con 
gratulatory  letter,  suggesting  that  he  was  now  on 
the  road  to  success,  and  filing  many  a  wise  saw 
that  grated  on  Caleb's  mental  ears.  But  Caleb 
Hale  collected  his  rents  and  sent  home  an  allow 
ance  to  Vashti,  his  wife,  and  to  little  Dick.  For 
a  long  line  of  New  England  Hales  told  him  that 
Cripple  Creek  was  no  place  for  a  mother  and 
child.  Shafts  went  down,  shaft  houses  rose, 
great  dumps  were  spewed  out  on  the  hill  near 
him.  On  his  side  of  the  gulch  long  wagon  trains 
of  ore  filed  across  his  claim,  and  still  he  lived  in 
his  cabin,  looked  after  his  little  property,  and 
rather  enjoyed  being  regarded  as  a  madman  in  the 
bedlam  about  him.  Special  writers,  "  doing 
Cripple  Creek  "  for  the  Eastern  press,  wrote  pieces 
about  Caleb  Hale  — "  The  madman  of  Gold 
Gulch,"  one  writer  called  him  —  and  Vashti 
brought  these  papers  containing  the  articles  about 
Caleb  to  the  Globe  office.  The  articles  were  re 
printed,  and  New  Raynham,  hearing  that  Caleb 
Hale  had  refused  two  hundred  thousand  in  cash 
for  his  claim,  gasped  and  began  to  consider  the 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "        107 

propriety  of  calling  on  Mrs.  Hale.  Mrs.  Kil- 
worth,  divinely  sent  of  Boyce  did  call  on  her  step- 
sister-in-law,  and  certain  other  angels  of  social 
mercy,  also  providentially  sent  from  the  Kilworth 
bank,  darkened  the  doorway  of  the  Hale  home. 
And  Mrs.  Hale,  dressed  like  Constitution  Street 
during  a  fair,  in  the  course  of  her  regular  after 
noon  parades, —  always  made  it  a  point  to  call  at 
the  Globe  office  to  get  these  visits  into  the  society 
columns.  Incidentally  she  spent  a  few  blithe  mo 
ments  of  her  call  chinning  the  men  in  the  printing 
office. 

And  then  one  fair  day  in  spring  came  a  telegram 
from  Denver  to  the  Globe  announcing  that  Caleb 
Hale,  known  as  the  madman  of  Gold  Gulch,  had 
at  last  sold  his  famous  claim,  The  Son  of  a  Gam- 
boleer,  to  the  Stratton  interests  for  a  quarter  of 
a  million  dollars.  The  telegram  made  a  tre 
mendous  sensation  in  New  Raynham,  and  the 
Hale  myth,  gilded  by  time  and  diamond-crusted 
with  Hale  virtues,  was  revived  in  the  town. 

In  the  meantime  Boyce  Kilworth  had  plodded 
into  his  late  forties  thinking,  aspiring,  living  in 
terms  of  money.  And  because  he  had  squeezed 
all  the  nobility  of  life  into  a  minute  seven-per-cent. 


io8  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

schedule,  he  had  gradually  become  used  —  cal 
loused  maybe  —  to  a  habit  of  clipping  off  any 
annoying  moralities  that  stuck  out  and  spoiled  the 
symmetry  of  his  little  edifice.  So  in  secret  his 
scissors  were  busy  —  busier  than  even  he  realised. 
He  had  kept  a  double  ledger  account  with  God, 
entering  nothing  but  cash  on  either  side.  There 
were  times  when  Kilworth  could  not  help  feeling 
that  his  account  was  in  the  red;  that  he  must  pay 
more  money  to  God  in  the  way  of  church  dona 
tions,  public  benevolences,  and  other  cash  items. 
But  God  had  not  seemed  to  require  interest  on  the 
overdraft,  and  often  Kilworth  at  the  end  of  a 
year  had  balanced  the  books  by  visioning  under  the 
credit  column  "  to  net  loss  "  and  at  the  foot  of  the 
debit  column  "  to  net  profit,"  and  let  it  go  at 
that.  He  had  grown  into  a  portly,  sleek-jowled 
man,  with  a  face  entirely  unwrinkled  except  by  fat; 
a  man  of  Eminent  Respectability.  Gray  hair  cov 
ered  his  large  head,  and  he  had  reduced  his  gray 
ing  beard  to  a  moustache  which  still  retained  its 
black.  He  was  amiable  to  the  point  of  geniality, 
and  his  stock  of  jokes  was  so  well  known  in  the 
bank  and  at  the  sheet-metal  mill  —  the  mill  that 
had  grown  from  shed  to  shed  until  it  had  become 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "        109 

almost  a  "  plant  " —  and  at  the  church  board  meet 
ings,  and  also  at  the  Associated  Charities  Board, 
the  Commercial  Club,  and  the  county  central  com 
mittee  of  his  party,  that  his  associates  could  list  the 
whole  jokelogue  from  memory.  They  were 
mostly  money  stories,  about  the  blundering  Irish 
man,  and  the  sharp  Jew,  and  these  stories  were 
highly  proper,  if  not  very  funny.  But  they  were 
standard  stock  and  every  one  knew  when  and 
where  to  laugh  at  them. 

He  built  up  in  his  heart  an  image  of  himself 
as  a  burden  bearer,  and  liked  to  condone  with 
himself  about  the  crushing  weight  of  other  peo 
ple's  burdens  that  bent  his  shoulders.  Occasion 
ally  his  self-pity  found  its  way  into  his  talks,  short, 
non-committal,  reticent  utterances  —  dull  and  col 
ourless,  that  could  hardly  be  called  conversations; 
but  burden  bearing  was  one  of  his  favourite  themes 
in  these  laconic  utterances.  He  bore  Congress 
man  Ladgett's  burdens  and  that  worthy  soul  never 
had  to  decide  how  to  cast  a  vote.  Boyce  Kil- 
worth,  consulting  with  an  office  in  New  York  on 
Lower  Broadway,  always  told  Judge  Ladgett  how 
to  vote.  The  banker  bore  Toney  Delaney's  bur 
dens  so  that  in  a  convention,  Tony  never  had  to 


no  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

worry  about  what  issues  he  should  support,  nor 
what  candidates  he  should  favour;  he  got  these 
things  on  a  slip  of  paper  from  the  back  room  of 
the  bank,  just  before  the  convention  assembled, 
and  all  he  had  to  do  was  to  round  up  the  delega 
tions  and  carry  out  the  programme.  At  the  sheet- 
metal  mill  it  was  the  same ;  Boyce  Kilworth  knew 
the  market.  He  sold  the  output,  paid  the 
pay-roll,  bore  the  burden  and  took  the  profits. 
And  all  his  burden  bearing  in  one  way  or  another 
seemed  to  bring  him  back  about  seven  per  cent. 

"  The  chief,"  ventured  Toney  Delaney  one  day, 
in  an  outburst  of  confidence  to  Colonel  Longford, 
"  has  things  coming  his  way  pretty  fast  these  days. 
Do  you  know,"  and  here  the  Irishman  lowered 
his  voice  and  looked  about  him  for  eavesdrop 
pers,  "  he  showed  me  his  little  brown  book  yester 
day,  and  he's  got  a  cool  hundred  thousand  dollars 
tucked  away  for  each  of  his  girls  —  their  hope 
box,  he  calls  it!  " 

"And  what  else?"  asked  the  Colonel. 

"  Mother  of  Moses,  man  —  isn't  that 
enough  ?  "  returned  Delaney. 

"  I  suppose  so  — "  repeated  the  Colonel  medi 
tatively  and  added:  "  What  with  Boyce's  low 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "        1 1 1 

morals  and  their  mother's  kind  of  brains,  God 
would  just  about  be  showin'  his  contempt  for  them 
by  givin'  them  all  that  money !  Poor  gels  — 
poor,  poor  gels!  "  he  sighed  and  changed  the  sub 
ject. 

That  same  night  the  Colonel  tilted  a  chair  on 
the  sidewalk  to  the  brick  wall  of  the  Globe  office 
for  a  session  with  Archimedes  whose  hands,  in 
the  cool  of  the  June  evening  were  resting  from  the 
lever  that  moves  the  world.  The  crass  reliance 
of  Boyce  Kilworth  upon  money  to  make  happiness 
was  big  in  the  old  man's  mind,  and  he  opened 
the  session  by  blurting  out:  "  Tyin'  fightin' 
cats'  tails  over  the  clothes  line,  makin'  a  fellow  live 
with  the  hussy  he's  been  philanderin'  with,  and 
givin'  a  man  all  the  money  he's  sold  his  soul  to 
the  devil  for  —  how  the  blessed  Lord  does  get 
even  with  them  who  try  to  fool  Him !  "  At  the 
astonished  look  of  the  editor  the  Colonel  ex 
plained:  "  'Tis  a  Chinese  proverb  from  the  Tal 
mud  or  the  Koran,  I  misremember  which;  but  it's 
the  milk  of  the  word,  son!  " 

A  month  had  passed  since  the  sensation  of 
Caleb  Hale's  good  fortune  had  stirred  the  town, 
and  naturally  the  talk  of  the  Colonel  and  the  editor 


in  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

turned  to  the  prospective  return  of  Hale.  At  the 
end  of  an  hour  the  Colonel  was  nodding  a  trou 
bled  head  and  saying:  "So  he  takes  her  out 
buggy  ridin'  on  the  dark  nights,  eh?  And  sends 
her  theatre  passes,  and  slips  around  to  see  her  of 
an  evenin'?"  The  editor  indicated  his  assent. 
"And  he's  too  good  a  foreman  to  fire?"  The 
old  man  paused  and  looked  at  the  rising  moon, 
and  sighed  as  he  went  on :  "  Well,  I  don't  know. 
I've  a  letter  from  Caleb  sayin'  he  would  be  here 
soon,  but  that  may  mean  a  day  or  a  week  or  a 
month.  But  when  he  does  come  he  may  do  you 
the  kindness  of  solvin'  your  problem  by  killin' 
your  foreman  by  way  of  poetic  justice.  He's  a 
man  of  nice  tastes  —  is  Caleb." 

The  Colonel  sat  for  a  time  drumming  on  the 
chair  between  his  bony  legs  while  he  considered 
many  things,  and  then  sighed  a  dreary  sigh  and 
spoke:  "Poor  —  poor  Vashti.  I've  know  the 
philanderin'  lot  of  Sellarses  for  three  generations 
back  —  a  pack  o'  set  is  the  whole  kit  and  bilin'. 
Poor  Vashti  —  vain  as  a  weathercock,  common  as 
kraut,  and  weak  as  dishwater  by  the  blood  that 
is  in  her;  addle-pated,  and  noisy  as  a  load  of  coal 
goin'  down  a  chute!  It  will  take  more  than  all 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"        113 

Caleb's  money  to  make  folks  out  of  her."  He 
mellowed  and  smiled  in  a  pause,  then  took  up  his 
monologue:  "  Ye  can  read  her  and  all  the  likes 
of  her  as  an  open  book.  She's  the  kind  that  be 
lieves  all  she  needs  to  move  in  high  society  is  to 
know  how  to  make  a  boiled  salad  dressing  and  veal 
loaf.  Poor,  poor  Vashti!  But,"  he  aroused 
himself  and  said,  "  this  won't  do.  We  must  take 
this  up  in  the  lodge.  How  old  will  Vashti  be  by 
now,  Archimedes?  Only  twenty-eight  or  so? 
Man,"  cried  the  old  Colonel,  earnestly,  "  Man, 
if  I  was  the  Providence  Boyce  Kilworth  is,  which 
Heaven  forbid,  I'd  make  a  general  order  in 
Heaven,  for  the  angels  never  to  set  down  any 
thing  against  anyone  under  thirty."  After  pon 
dering  a  moment  over  his  hypothetical  ukase  he 
amended  it,  "  and  over  fifty;  we  have  only  twenty 
responsible  years  —  and  I'm  not  quite  sure  of 
them!" 

It  was  late  when  the  Colonel  ambled  into  the 
street  and  started  homeward.  He  deliberately 
missed  the  first  car  that  passed  him,  and  when  the 
east-bound  train  was  whistling  in  the  yards,  he 
strolled  aimlessly  down  to  the  station,  two  blocks 
out  of  his  way,  to  stretch  his  legs,  and  to  see  what 


ii4  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

he  might  see.  And  there,  dropping  off  the  rear 
Pullman,  before  the  porter  had  put  down  his 
box,  was  Caleb  Hale,  natty,  dapper  —  but  as  worn 
and  lined  as  a  man  of  forty  dare  be.  When  the 
two  men  had  found  a  carriage,  and  the  Colonel 
had  made  the  driver  turn  the  top  down  so  that 
they  could  enjoy  the  moonlight  and  the  Colonel 
could  show  Hale  how  the  town  had  grown,  they 
got  in  and  for  the  fourth  time  the  old  man  ex 
claimed:  "Well,  well,  well  —  and  it's  you!" 
Then  he  turned  to  Hale  and  quizzed:  "And 
why  did  you  come  home  ?  —  does  the  family  know 
you're  comin'  to-night  —  on  this  train?" 

"  No,"  answered  Hale,  "  this  train  is  a  sur 
prise;  they  know  I'm  coming  to-day  or  to-morrow. 
And,  Colonel,"  Hale  went  on,  putting  a  hand  on 
the  elder 'man's  bony. knee,  "  I'm  coming  home  be 
cause  the  game  has  got  too  strong.  It  passed  my 
limit.  Oh,  I've  been  fighting,  Colonel  —  fighting 
for  all  these  long  months  —  watching  the  price 
of  that  mine  rise  and  rise;  and  every  time  the 
price  jumped  I  caught  myself  wanting  to  take  the 
price  —  and  sit  in  the  game.  But  — "  he  laughed 
self-deprecatingly,  "I  said:  *  Steady  —  boy  — 
you've  beaten  it  this  far,  stay  with  it,'  and  I  did. 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"        115 

Finally  I  felt  strong  enough  to  sell.  So  I  sold, 
and  —  it  was  too  much  for  me  —  this  last  month 
since  the  sale,  and  I  had  to  come !  " 

"  Had  to  come  ?  "  echoed  the  Colonel.  "  Why, 
Cale,  you  don't  mean  — " 

Then  Hale  broke  out:  "  I  tell  you,  Colonel,  a 
place  —  where  money  —  raw,  stinking,  wet,  green, 
uncured  money  is  god,  comes  nearer  to  hell  than 
any  other  place  on  this  planet." 

"Women,  Caleb?"  asked  the  old  man  softly. 

Caleb  Hale  smiled  a  curious  reflective  smile  and 
shook  his  head:  "No,  Colonel  —  the  woman 
proposition  doesn't  get  me  now.  I've  played  that 
hand  out!  Seven  or  eight  years  ago  the  women 
might  have  got  me  —  along  with  the  rest."  He 
stopped  and  lifted  his  face  to  the  Colonel  and 
said  gently:  "  But  there's  my  Dick  —  my  little 
boy —  Nope,  Colonel  —  it  wasn't  the  woman 
proposition."  He  broke  out  suddenly:  "  It  was 
the  money;  the  devil  —  my  own  personal  devil  — 
the  old  one,  who  came  up  holding  out  the  old  lure 
to  bet,  to  speculate  —  to  play  the  big  mining  game. 
And  he  sugar-coated  it,  slimed  it  all  over  with  re 
spectability —  tempted  me  to  be  big-rich  —  to 
Be  Somebody.  And  I  actually  got  to  thinking 


n6  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

how  fine  it  would  be  to  come  home  with  more 
money  than  Boyce  —  to  be  more  respectable  than 
Boyce  —  and  then  I  came  to  myself  —  and  ran  — 
ran  like  Joseph  from  Mrs.  Potiphar  —  and  here 
I  am!" 

"  But  your  money,  Cale?"  inquired  the  Colo 
nel  cautiously.  "  What  are  you  going  to  do 
with—" 

u  I've  already  done  with  it,"  cut  in  Hale.  And 
to  the  elder  man's  blank  look  Hale  replied: 
"  I've  put  it  where  it  will  do  the  most  good!  " 

The  Colonel  nodded  unsatisfied,  and  Hale  re 
peated,  stubbornly,  as  one  who  had  decided  upon 
a  formula:  "  I  tell  you  I've  done  with  it.  I've 
put  it  where  it  will  do  the  most  good." 

The  Colonel  saw  that  Hale  had  closed  the 
door  into  that  inquiry,  and  the  two  rode  in  an 
embarrassed  silence  for  a  moment,  then  Hale  went 
on:  "  You  go  tell  Brother  Boyce,  what  I've 
told  you,  and  get  it  to  Charley  Herrington ;  they've 
both  wired  me  and  written  to  me  —  and  I'm  on 
to  both  of  'em.  I've  put  that  money  where  it  will 
do  the  most  good,  and  I'm  going  to  rent  a  little 
piece  of  a  store  and  open  a  cigar  stand,  and  buy 
a  place  and  have  a  garden." 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"        117 

"But — Cale — "  remonstrated  the  astounded 
Colonel,  "  the  town's  prepared  to  make  a  million 
aire  out  of  you  —  you  can't  do  any  such  thing  as 
that  —  why — " 

"  Nevertheless,   Colonel  —  that's  my  game." 

"  Why,  Cale,  the  town  will  laugh  —  you'd  be  a 
byword  and  a  joke  for  — " 

"  Well  —  let  'em  laugh,  and  be  damned  to  'em. 
It's  my  business  how  I  make  my  living  —  if  it's 
honest !  " 

As  they  rode  past  the  gorgeous  peaked  and 
towered  mansion  of  the  Kilworths,  Caleb  Hale 
asked:  "  How  is  Brother  Boyce  coming  on?  " 

"  Just  now,"  answered  the  Colonel,  "  your  dis 
tinguished  step-brother  is  making  a  mint  of  money 
out  of  his  new  tin-mill,  and  putting  it  right  back 
in  improvements  and  additions.  But  it's  a  gold 
mine.  Boyce  has  the  golden  touch,"  the  Colonel 
continued.  "  He  has  the  leprosy  of  easy  success !  " 
The  real  scrap  heap  of  life,  Cale,  is  made  up  of 
those  fragile  souls,  whom  the  Lord  throws  out  be 
cause  they  will  not  stand  the  thundering  blows  of 
fate,  that  are  needed  to  make  a  real  soul !  " 

"  So  that's  your  theory  of  life?  "  asked  Hale. 
"  Thundering  blows?  " 


n8  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

And  the  Colonel  looked  at  the  warped,  wrinkled 
face  beside  him,  all  eager  and  cheerful  in  the 
moonlight,  and  thought  of  what  a  blow  might  be 
hanging  over  the  younger  head.  But  the  elder 
man  smiled  and  said:  "This  is  no  time  for 
philosophy,  Horatio."  Hale  leaned  forward  to 
catch  the  first  glimpse  of  his  home.  Lights  in 
the  upper  part  of  the  house  relieved  the  tension  of 
the  Colonel's  nerves  and  he  bade  Hale  farewell 
and  good  luck  and  went  sailing  down  the  street 
with  his  arms  stretched  out  on  both  sides  of  the 
deep  upholstered  carriage  seat,  and  with  his  feet 
serenely  on  the  cushions  before  him,  while  he  bel 
lowed  an  ancient  love  song  —  like  an  old  dog  to 
the  old  moon,  as  he  rolled  down  the  street. 

The  commotion  at  the  curb,  the  Colonel's  roar 
ing  farewell,  and  the  driver's  word  to  the  horses 
shot  it  suddenly  into  the  wife's  consciousness  that 
her  husband  had  returned.  At  the  front  door  he 
found  her  waiting  for  him.  He  stepped  toward 
her  eagerly  but  she  stood  trembling  and  shudder 
ing  in  the  doorway.  Then  she  spoke  as  one  in 
fear: 

"  Caleb  —  don't  —  don't  come  in  —  don't  come 
until  I've  told  you!  " 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"        119 

"  Why,  Vashti  —  mamma  — "  he  cried  and 
looked  keenly  into  her  pale  twitching  face  under 
the  hall  gas :  "  What  —  what,"  and  with  a  shrill, 
hard  cry  of  understanding  he  almost  screamed  — 
"WHAT!" 

"  Not  until  I've  told  you  something,  Cale  — 
then  maybe  you'll  not  want  — "  She  spoke  slowly 
as  one  reciting  a  speech  learned  by  rote. 

They  gazed  into  each  other's  eyes  unsteadily 
for  a  moment,  then  the  woman  groaned  and 
slumped  and  turned  away  in  shame.  She  did  not 
go  up  the  stairs  before  her,  but  went  into  a 
darkened  front  room  and  the  man  staring  at  the 
vacant  door  a  minute  groped  to  the  steps  behind 
him  and  crumpled  down. 

Caleb  Hale  sat  looking  blankly  at  the  walk  be 
fore  him,  as  a  man  swaying  under  a  burden. 
From  time  to  time  as  the  hours  passed  he  shifted 
his  position,  rising  to  a  chair  beside  him,  leaning 
against  the  porch  post,  sensible  of  the  perfume  of 
the  flowers  near  his  face;  pacing  the  short  porch 
floor,  again  sitting  on  the  top  step  above  the  walk, 
always  with  bowed  head,  save  when  once  or  twice 
he  lifted  his  face  in  agony  to  the  stars. 

The  night  was  wan  and  old,  and  the  sparrows 


120  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

in  the  eaves  were  beginning  to  stir,  when  Caleb, 
sitting  on  the  steps  with  his  head  buried  in  his 
hands,  cried  softly:  '  Vashti  —  come  here — " 
He  heard  her  rise  in  the  dark  room  behind  him, 
and  in  an  instant  she  stood  above  him.  He  did 
not  speak  but  slowly  put  up  a  hand,  which  she 
took;  he  rose  and  faced  her  as  he  kissed  the  hand 
that  held  his  and  whispered:  "  Mamma  — 
mamma  —  mamma  —  will  you  forgive  me  — 
too  I  " 


PART  II 

And  then  for  twenty-five  years  the  winds  of 
time  and  chance  blew  over  the  world.  "  I  have 
seen,"  saith  the  preacher,  "  that  time  and  chance 
come  to  every  man."  Now  in  life  are  two 
forces  that  fashion  it:  the  inner  force,  the 
spiritual  bent  and  inclination  of  the  soul;  the 
outer  force  of  time  and  chance.  So  the  race 
is  not  to  the  swift,  nor  the  battle  to  the 
strong.  But  these  rewards  and  counters  of  life 
—  the  race  and  the  battle  —  are  only  the  rewards 
and  counters  of  exterior  life  —  events,  circum 
stances,  material  things.  Within  where  the  soul 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"        121 

lies,  where  the  heart  reaps  its  harvest,  there  the 
race  is  to  the  swift,  the  battle  is  to  the  strong; 
and  time  and  chance  — •  the  one  tragically  inevit 
able,  the  other  shifting  —  pass  with  the  fleeting 
days  and  temper  the  soul  they  beat  upon  until  it 
shows  forth  its  mettle  and  thus  finds  its  just  and 
inexorable  destiny. 

For  twenty-five  years  these  winds  of  fate  — 
time  and  chance  —  blew  across  the  life  of  Boyce 
Kilworth.  They  galvanized  him  with  metallic 
success. 

As  the  years  piled  upon  him,  Boyce  Kilworth 
found  fewer  and  fewer  men  to  whom  he  cared  to 
talk,  and  no  women.  At  home  he  discoursed 
largely  in  ukases,  and  at  the  bank  and  at  the  tin 
mill  he  gave  orders.  The  tin  mills  had  spread 
over  the  acreage  called  Boyceville  like  a  great, 
brown  cancer  on  the  hillside.  A  little  town  gath 
ered  around  the  mills  —  a  model  town,  of  course ; 
a  town  with  proper  houses  set  at  proper  distances 
apart,  with  proper  flowers  growing  in  proper 
places,  and  proper  people  living  in  the  model 
houses  —  a  town  wherein  the  plumbing  and  the 
marriage  licenses  in  the  proper  homes  were  scru 
tinised  with  equal  rigour !  And  over  it  all  beamed 


122  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

the  grace  and  beneficence  of  seven  per  cent,  net 
on  the  investment! 

But  at  the  bank,  there  his  heart  was!  There 
during  most  of  the  day,  in  the  holy  of  holies  be 
hind  his  roll-topped  desk,  he  sat  sphinx-like,  and 
grim !  And  there  the  whole  community  bowed, 
whether  they  accepted  his  general  providential 
suzerainty  or  not,  bowed  a  willing  neck  to  his  heel 
in  financial  matters.  Men  who  jeered  at  his 
highly  moral  feudalism,  gave  their  money  to  Kil- 
worth  for  investment  without  question  —  and  re 
ceived  their  seven  per  cent,  regularly.  Scores  of 
business  men  all  but  trusted  their  property  to 
Kilworth,  and  in  the  savings  department  of  his 
bank  hundreds  of  accounts  were  made  by  men  and 
women  who  left  their  money  personally  with  Boyce 
Kilworth,  taking  no  receipt,  trusting  solely  to  his 
integrity.  He  had  notes  of  merchants,  real  estate 
dealers  and  stockmen  issued  in  blank  to  cover  their 
over-drafts  or  for  his  own  accommodation.  The 
Kilworth  bank  was  a  one-man  bank;  it  had  officers 
and  directors,  of  course,  but  they  were  rubber 
stamp  replicas  of  Boyce  Kilworth.  The  Kilworth 
tin  mills  were  one-man  mills;  the  officers  and  di 
rectors  were  busy  approving  the  plans  of  Boyce 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"        123 

Kilworth.  The  Boyce  Investment  Company  was 
a  one-man  real  estate  concern;  its  officers  and  di 
rectors  were  consecrated  to  the  high  task  of  bring 
ing  the  fulness  of  the  earth  to  Boyce  Kilworth. 
The  church  where  he  worshipped  was  a  one-man 
church,  where  a  preacher  and  the  elders  were  de 
voutly  bowed  to  the  task  of  kowtowing  to  Boyce 
Kilworth  and  enjoying  him  forever.  So  nat 
urally  his  God  was  a  one-man  God  whose  enter 
prises  in  the  universe  were  expected  to  bend  to 
the  prayers  of  Boyce  Kilworth.  "  Heaven,"  so 
jibed  Caleb  Hale,  "  for  Boyce,  is  organised  much 
like  the  bank,  where  there  is  a  properly  gray- 
haired,  properly  dignified,  properly  pliable  cashier 
nominally  in  charge,  but  who  wouldn't  save  a  soul 
without  consulting  Boyce  Kilworth,  any  more 
than  old  Grubb  at  the  bank  would  discount  a 
twenty-five-dollar  note  without  consulting  the  head 
of  the  institution.  Though  I  do  believe  that  Boyce 
encourages  the  Lord's  work  among  the  heathen, 
much  as  he  blesses  Grubb  in  his  golf,  because 
missionaries  and  golf  are  both  well  esteemed  in 
high  financial  circles." 

Through  the  years  that  stretched  half  a  century 
back,  Boyce  Kilworth  had  learned  the  habit  of 


i24  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

keeping  his  business  in  his  head;  sometimes  in  his 
wisdom  he  found  it  best  not  to  deposit  at  once  in 
its  proper  account  a  sum  intrusted  to  him.  Dur 
ing  the  panic  of  '93  he  had  learned  that  bank  ex 
aminers  could  be  fooled  —  when  the  inexorable 
need  of  financial  salvation  demanded  that  they 
be  fooled.  So  as  he  blew  the  glorious  bubble  of 
his  seven  per  cent,  beneficence,  he  raised  from  an 
exact  science  to  a  fine  art  the  rather  common  and 
sordid  business  of  robbing  Peter  to  pay  Paul.  And 
as  the  Kilworth  interests  broadened,  a  score  of 
small  companies  —  holding  companies,  sales 
agencies,  purchasing  agencies,  and  their  imitation 
corporations  bearing  almost  similar  names,  grew 
up  about  the  bank,  and  only  Boyce  Kilworth  knew 
exactly  which  company  was  solvent,  and  which 
was  a  paper  travesty  of  its  respectable  companion. 
More  and  more  he  kept  his  own  counsel;  more  and 
more  he  grew  owlish  and  more  and  more  he  was 
busy  with  his  own  affairs  and  had  no  time  to  talk. 
For  he  knew  that  a  miscalculation,  a  moment's  in 
advertence,  an  hour's  relaxation,  would  shatter  a 
financial  edifice  which  he  regarded  as  a  special  dis 
pensation  of  Providence  in  his  favour.  His  faith 
in  God  was  founded  upon  the  miraculous  preserv- 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"        125 

ance  of  the  Traders'  National  Bank.  He  knew 
how  great  the  miracle  was,  and  paid  his  tithe,  and 
did  his  stint  of  religious  observance,  and  walked 
uprightly  before  men.  And  they  said  behold  the 
substantial  man,  without  fads  or  follies,  without 
sentiment  or  foibles ;  him  we  may  tie  to  I  Thus  he 
waxed  fat  in  riches  and  in  power  as  the  winds  of 
time  and  chance  blew  over  his  life.  But  the 
house  of  Kilworth  was  built  upon  sand  —  stage 
morals  and  stage  money.  He  was  a  man  in  his 
seventies  who  looked  sixty  —  smooth  of  skin,  with 
a  shaven  face,  white  of  hair,  steady  of  nerve,  slow 
of  brain,  and  so  hard  of  heart  and  dead  there  that 
his  crafty  kindness,  all  prepense  and  put  out  at 
interest,  fooled  many  men  and  most  of  all  Boyce 
Kilworth.  But  it  did  not  fool  his  sons-in-law; 
they  knew  him  —  all  three  of  them  —  the  sap- 
head,  Hardy,  dubbed  by  Colonel  Longford,  the 
Light  of  the  Harem  of  the  Country  Club;  the 
scoundrel,  Griffin,  who  lived  in  the  great  city  and 
sometimes  forged  a  check  which  Kilworth  had  to 
cash,  and  Thompson,  the  plodder  in  the  bank,  who 
for  five  long  years  had  never  been  able  to  get  a 
balance  any  day  on  any  book  over  which  he  toiled 
and  smudged  and  moiled.  They  all  knew  that 


126  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

Boyce  Kilworth's  heart  was  dead  in  him.  And  so 
did  his  youngest  daughter,  Deborah,  twenty-six 
years  old  and  still  away  from  home  at  school  — 
with  a  bachelor's  degree,  a  master's  degree,  a 
doctor's  degree,  and  taking  music  and  domestic 
science  — "  anything  on  earth,"  quoth  Elsie  Barnes 
at  the  society  editor's  desk  at  the  Globe  office, 
"  to  keep  her  out  of  that  whited  sepulchre  that 
the  Kilworths  call  home.  And  her  father  down 
there  at  the  bank,  working  his  head  off  for  his 
sons-in-law  who  are  mad  because  he  doesn't  die 
and  let  them  have  it,  and  gnawing  his  heart  out  be 
cause  the  one  daughter  he  has  won't  live  with  him 
and  insists  on  spending  a  lot  of  money  that  he 
can't  see  seven  per  cent.  in.  Say,  Charley,"  added 
Elsie,  who  was  talking  to  the  advertising  solicitor 
as  she  dashed  a  straggling,  dirty,  brown  lock  of 
hair  from  her  eyes,  and  whirled  around  to  her 
typewriter,  u  ain't  it  grand  to  be  rich!  " 

As  the  prevailing  winds  in  a  burned  forest  cut 
away  the  char  and  ashes,  baring  the  beautiful 
grain  from  the  heart  of  the  wood,  so  the  winds  of 
time  and  chance,  keen,  merciless,  constant,  broke 
into  a  thousand  wrinkles  the  glad  countenance  that 
shone  from  the  heart  of  Caleb  Hale.  Broken  and 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"        127 

battered  his  face  was,  yet  his  eyes  shone  out  from 
his  seared  countenance  with  an  inner  light  that  was 
strong  and  kind.  He  was  a  man  about  whom 
myths  and  legends  gathered.  For,  to  begin  with, 
there  was  the  story  of  his  early  career  as  the  town 
gambler,  with  its  sure  basis  of  romantic  facts  to 
build  on.  And  there  was  the  legend  of  the  lost 
fortune  and  the  horse-laugh  that  went  up  in  the 
town  when  Caleb  Hale  came  home  and  opened  his 
cigar  stand,  and  offered  no  explanation  for  his 
lowly  estate.  So  myth  said  he  had  gambled  it 
away  in  a  night  or  that  he  had  invested  it  in  wild 
cat  mining  stock.  But  the  prevailing  tradi 
tion  declared  that  the  whole  story  of  the  sale 
was  an  invention  of  Vashti's  to  get  into  society. 
His  cigar  store  failed.  And  coached  by  Colonel 
Longford,  and  without  taking  thought  of  Vashti, 
Caleb  Hale  opened  a  little  restaurant,  where  he  ex 
pected  to  serve  rare,  thick  beefsteaks;  mysterious 
omelets,  and  sea-foods,  rich  and  strange.  But 
there  Vashti  rose  with  the  strength  of  a  giantess, 
and  appalled  the  Colonel  with  her  force.  For  she 
was  grounded  in  a  deep  and  abiding  faith  that 
beefsteaks  should  be  pounded  before  cooking;  she 
would  brook  no  lettuce  unless  served  with  vinegar 


128  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

and  sugar  and  her  idea  of  an  omelet  was  scram 
bled  eggs  with  minced  ham.  She  overbore  by  sheer 
lung  strength  the  two  men  who  had  dreamed  such 
high  dreams  of  commercialised  art  in  cookery. 
So  the  restaurant  closed,  and  that  vision  faded  un 
realised.  It  was  after  the  restaurant  closed  that 
Caleb  started  a  greenhouse  on  the  lot  he  bought 
the  week  after  he  returned  from  Cripple  Creek, 
and  later  he  opened  a  flower  store  in  the  frayed 
end  of  Constitution  Street.  And  there  he  stuck. 
A  passion  for  flowers  grew  big  and  beautiful  in 
him.  And  because  it  is  the  love  of  flowers  that 
makes  them  thrive,  slowly  his  greenhouse  began 
to  spread  over  the  lot,  to  cover  part  of  another  lot 
and  then  all  of  it,  and  little  Dick  Hale  graduated 
from  High  School  and  was  able  to  go  to  College 
—  to  his  father's  College  in  Cambridge,  and  Caleb 
Hale's  pride  in  the  boy  was  a  mania.  And  when 
the  boy  came  marching  home  with  his  degree,  he 
took  that  first  calm,  serene  survey  of  the  universe 
that  youth  takes,  stepping  into  its  place  of  con 
quest,  and  from  the  vantage  of  the  flower  store 
found  little  to  do.  For  with  some  sort  of  ex 
quisite  irony  upon  Caleb's  elaborate  public  scorn 
for  money,  Dick  Hale  had  made  his  major  study 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"        129 

at  Harvard  "  commerce  and  banking."  Grizzled 
old  Colonel  Longford,  shuffling  into  the  flower 
shop  during  the  first  week  of  Dick  Hale's  return 
to  conquer  New  Raynham,  broke  in  upon  a  sad, 
pitiful,  little  interview  between  father  and  son 
about  the  limited  territory  offering  itself  for  con 
quest  along  lines  of  banking  and  commerce  in  a 
flower  shop,  and  the  Colonel  toddled  out  on  his 
three  legs,  with  what  fire  he  could  blow  into  his 
manner,  and  came  rattling  into  Boyce  Kilworth's 
office  and  there  bulldozed  Kilworth  into  giving 
Dick  Hale  a  place  in  the  bank. 

When  Dick  Hale  came  into  the  bank,  eager  for 
work,  capable,  charged  with  new  ideas,  and 
abounding  with  the  ambition  of  youth,  Kilworth 
—  partly,  perhaps,  unable  to  resist  the  youth,  and 
partly  because  Kilworth  felt  the  need  of  the  young 
man — made  him  an  open  favourite,  loaded  him 
with  work  and  in  three  years  had  won  him. 

And  it  was  then  that  Deborah  Kilworth,  A.B., 
A.M.,  Ph.D.,  B.M.  and  B.  of  D.  S.,  entered  the 
plot. 

Not  that  she  entered  the  life  of  Richard  Hale 
with  an  especially  dramatic  entrance.  They  had 
Dickied  and  Debbied  each  other  all  their  lives; 


130  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

through  the  grades,  and  through  the  high  school 

—  three  years  apart  —  with  no  thought  of  any 
feeling  more  tender  between  the  two  than  a  left 
over  feeling  on  the  boy's  part  that  she  was  a 
kinky-haired,  dirty-faced  kid,  and  on  her  part  that 
he  was  one  of  the  big  smarties  who  be-deviled  little 
girls  in  the  lower  classes.     Yet  Deborah  Kilworth, 
being  in  doubt,  went  to  an  authority,  and  the  au 
thority  being  in  the  bank  one  July  afternoon,  she 
went  there,   drew  up   a   chair  in   front  of  Dick 
Hale's    flat-top    desk,    and    began:     "Dickie  — 
what  about  Radcliffe  ?     You're  a  Harvard  man  — 
and  it's  Barnard  or  Radcliffe  for  me  next  year  — 
I  want  to  do  some  work  in  social  organisation  of 
the  Assyrian  cities,  and  I  feel  that  Harvard  has 
the  best  courses  —  though  if  Pennsylvania  was  a 
place   for  women  —  but  I  don't  care  much   for 
Philadelphia  —  it's  either  New  York  or  Boston  — 
so  tell  me  about  Radcliffe  —  what  kind  is  it?" 

"Going  after  Nineveh  and  Tyre  —  eh?"  he 
teased,  smiling  boyishly  into  her  earnest  gray  eyes. 
"Say,  Debbie  —  why  start  so  far  up  the  social 
tree?  Have  you  heard  of  the  perfectly  corking 
course  they're  giving  next  year  at  Johns  Hopkins? 

—  something  about  the  beginnings  of  social  in- 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "        131 

stinct  as  manifest  in  the  gregarious  habits  of  the 
protozoa,  and  indicated  by  and  related  to  the  re 
production  of  their  species  by  sporeformations  — 
great  business  —  better  try  it.  Get  down  to  grass 
roots !  " 

The  gray  eyes  met  the  blue  with  a  hurt  expres 
sion,  and  the  girl  replied:  "  Oh  —  Dickie,  don't 
be  a  fool.  Tell  me  about  Radcliffe — " 

The  young  man  grinned  into  the  serious  gray 
eyes,  and  began:  "  Well,  Deb  —  it  seems  to  me 
that  for  a  girl  who  has  taken  her  A.B.  at  Kansas 
University,  her  Master's  degree  at  Wellesley,  her 
Doctor's  degree  at  Wisconsin,  her  music  at  Ober- 
lin,  and  her  Domestic  Science  at  Illinois  —  Rad 
cliffe  hasn't  much  to  show  you  —  except  the  clois 
tered  life,  and  the  blue-stocking  of  commerce." 

"That's  what  I've  heard  —  rather  sheltered 
and  exotic?"  she  questioned. 

He  nodded  and  burst  out:  "Say,  Debbie  — 
why  don't  you  quit  all  this  educational  rounding, 
straighten  up,  and  settle  down  and  — " 

She  smiled  cheerfully  at  him :  "  And  get  father 
another  son-in-law?  No,  thank  you.  Not 
for  — " 

"  Look  here,  now,  Debbie,  listen  to  me !     Did 


132  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

you  know  that  it  is  the  sorrow  of  your  father's 
life  that—" 

'  Yes,  and  he's  got  three  other  sorrows  of  his 
life,"  she  broke  in  flippantly.  "  There's  little 
Hardy,  and  George  Griffin,  and  poor  Thompson 

—  three  death's  heads  perching  on  his  bed  posts, 
grinning  at  him  in  his  sleep,  waiting  for  him  to  die ; 
and    I    presume    you    want    me    to    bring    in    a 
fourth  — " 

They  laughed  —  because  youth  always  laughs 
when  nothing  else  presents  itself,  and  Dick  an 
swered:  "Oh,  well,  Deb  —  you  know  I  didn't 
mean  that.  I  meant  why  not  come  home  and  live 
and  — " 

"  Dick!  "  she  exclaimed,  "  I  have  my  side  too. 
What  if  I  do  come  home?  What  will  I  come 
home  to?"  She  paused  and  smiled  and  said: 
"  Now,  I'm  going  to  feel  dreadfully  sorry  for  my 
self  —  but  if  I  come  home,  it's  only  to  hear  money 

—  money  —  money  —  dinged  at  me  all  the  time. 
Do  you  know,"  she  asked  cynically,  "  that  my  edu 
cation  to  date  has  cost  father  $11,387.64  in  prin 
cipal,  and  seven  per  cent,  interest  on  the  sum  in 
vested  if  I  had  not  spent  it?    Do  you  know  that  fa 
ther  invests  $9,348.93  every  year  in  benevolences 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "        133 

and  that  he  adds  what  he  spends  on  us  girls  at 
Christmas  to  make  the  sum  larger  and  fool  the 
Lord?  Did  you  know  that  he  gave  the  widow  of 
a  man  killed  in  the  zinc  galvanizing  works  $234 
yesterday  for  her  husband,  and  then  set  it  down 
as  charity?  Why,  Dick  —  Dick — did  you  real 
ise  that  father  actually  figures  that  beautiful 
model  village  of  Boyceville  as  a  seven  per  cent, 
investment  —  just  a  seven  per  cent,  investment 
including  the  overhead  charges,  as  he  calls  it? 
Perhaps  —  I  don't  know,  but  perhaps  at  one  time 
he  was  moved  by  the  beauty  of  it  —  the  fine  fra 
ternity  of  it  —  once  —  long  ago,"  she  mused  with 
a  troubled  frown.  "  I'm  not  sure,  but  now  — 
now  he  thinks  he  has  figured  out  a  nine  per  cent, 
increase  in  the  efficiency  of  the  men  by  reason  of 
their  housing!  Think  of  that,  Dick!  "  She  was 
gripping  the  mahogany  board  before  her,  and 
looking  steadily  at  the  youth,  facing  her  as  she 
cried:  "  That's  what  I  hear  —  when  I  hear  any 
thing  at  all  out  of  father,  and  when  he's  out  of 
the  house  I  hear  Esther,  and  Mary  and  Ruth 
whine  and  sniffle  because  '  papa  gives  so  much 
away;'  and  mamma  siding  right  in  with  them 
when  they're  at  home,  and  right  in  with  father 


134  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

when  the  girls  are  away.  Oh,  Dickie!  "  she  was 
speaking  quickly  and  earnestly.  "  I  know  that 
father  gives  you  an  impression  that  I'm  a  heart 
less  wretch;  and  not  a  good  daughter  —  but — " 

"  No,  Deborah,"  interrupted  Hale.  His  blue 
eyes  had  met  the  burning  light  in  the  gray  eyes 
that  sought  and  held  his  in  the  girl's  emotion,  and 
he  was  embarrassed.  "  Only  I  rather  thought  — " 

"  Oh,  you  rather  thought  what  they  all  think," 
she  cut  in  bitterly,  "  that  a  girl  with  a  beautiful 
home,  with  a  devoted  father,  and  a  slave  of  a 
mother,  and  three  doting  sisters,  whose  psychology 
tests  show  that  they  quit  growing  mentally  at  about 
ten  years  old,  should  stay  at  home  and  intrigue 
and  mollycoddle  father  for  fifty  or  a  hundred  dol 
lars,  and  hear  him  translating  every  fine  and  beau 
tiful  thing  on  earth  into  its  greatest  common  de 
nominator  in  money  —  money  —  money  —  should 
sit  like  a  tabby  cat  on  the  hearth  and  be  happy. 
But  I  can't,  Dick  Hale  —  I  can't  and  I  won't!  " 

The  girl  was  leaning  across  the  desk.  The 
young  man  had  risen  and  pushed  the  door  shut 
lest  the  janitor,  sweeping  in  the  deserted  counting 
room  in  front,  might  hear  her  rising  voice.  He 
stood  over  her,  looking  at  the  strong,  capable 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "        135 

hands  clasped  convulsively  on  the  table,  and  his 
eyes  rose  gently  to  her  eyes  that  were  looking, 
first  down,  then  up  at  him  in  a  misery  that  touched 
a  new  spring  in  his  heart. 

"  Dick,"  she  began,  "  ever  since  father  has  been 
making  you  his  favourite  here,  I've  known  what 
you'd  think  —  and  some  way  I've  wanted  you  to 
know  —  to  understand  —  to  appreciate  —  my 
point  of  view." 

He  dropped  into  a  chair  at  the  end  of  the  table 
near  her,  tilted  it  back,  rocking  on  his  toes  in 
silence  a  few  seconds,  and  said,  as  he  looked  stead 
ily  at  her:  "  Deb  —  it's  —  it's  tough  —  tough 
luck  —  why,  some  way  I  never  —  I  supposed,  of 
course,  that  — " 

"  Exactly  — "  bitterly,  "  you  supposed  I  just 
loved  the  dry  nonsense  of  text-books  and  the 
empty  pursuit  of  knowledge  —  and  me  an  old  girl 
hanging  around  the  colleges  like  a  ghost  with  the 
other  anaemic  old  maids,  and  pie-faced  old  bache 
lors  who  haven't  got  spunk  enough  to  get  out  and 
try  real  life.  Well,  I  hate  it  —  if  you  must  know." 
She  stopped  a  moment,  then  blurted  out,  blushing 
up  to  her  curling  hair:  "Dick  Hale  —  listen! 
I  want  just  what  other  women  want  —  a  home  — 


136  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

and  —  and  everything !  But  the  everlasting 
money  —  money  —  money  —  keeps  me  away 
from  it.  The  men  who'd  marry  me  for  my  money 
and  make  another  son-in-law,  I  wouldn't  have,  and 
the  men  I'd  like  —  they're  the  kind  who  are  too 
proud  to  be  sons-in-law — "  She  threw  out  her 
hands  hopelessly  and  cried:  "  So  I'm  going  to 
Radcliffe  —  or  Barnard.  And  because  he  can't 
make  me  helpless  —  as  helpless  as  mother,  and 
the  girls;  as  helpless  as  the  preachers  he  always 
wheedles  out  of  conference,  as  helpless  as  the  men 
at  the  mills  and  in  the  bank;  as  helpless  as  every 
thing  —  every  one  —  but  you,  Dick  —  that  father 
has  around  him,  and  has  gangrened  with  money  — 
you  and  the  whole  town  think  I'm  a  person  — " 
here  she  smiled  and  began  to  laugh,  "  without 
proper  human  emotions." 

The  laugh  saved  the  scene.  They  both  laughed. 
And  the  girl  pushed  her  chair  back  impulsively 
and  rose,  saying:  "  Now,  Dickie,  just  forget  it, 
and  remember  women  have  no  souls  and  that  I'm 
like  all  the  rest." 

He  stood  in  the  doorway  watching  her  as  she 
turned  the  corner,  and  the  phrase  "  the  men  I'd 
like  "  kept  coming  back  to  his  mind,  and  he  won- 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"        137 

dered  what  sort  of  fellows  she  really  would  like, 
and  if  maybe  he  was  of  the  sort. 

So  Dick  Hale,  with  a  vision  of  soft  brown  hair, 
curling  and  blowing  about  a  vivid  face,  with  a 
vision  of  exceedingly  even  teeth,  and  a  good 
healthy  skin  —  with  a  vision  before  his  eyes  of 
a  woman  who  seemed  for  the  first  time  fair  to 
him  —  went  back  to.  his  work.  And  his  work 
was  the  rather  delicate  business  of  putting  the 
bank  in  order  for  the  visit  of  an  examiner  the 
next  day  —  a  task  which  in  three  years  had  been 
transferred  by  Kilworth  largely  to  the  younger 
man.  Kilworth,  as  had  become  his  custom  when 
an  examination  was  imminent,  before  leaving  the 
bank  that  night,  had  laid  out  a  number  of  things  for 
Dick  to  do.  Certain  emergency  matters,  over 
drafts  and  cash  items  had  to  be  lifted  out  and  scat 
tered  among  the  notes,  using  the  accommodation 
paper  that  Kilworth' s  friends  had  left  in  blank  for 
him  to  use  at  will.  Also  there  was  a  note  of  Col 
onel  Longford's  to  be  signed  —  as  the  Colonel  de 
sired  a  renewal  and  had  written  to  Kilworth  from 
Wagon  Wheel  Gap,  Colorado,  to  extend  the  old 
note.  But  the  old  note  was  in  a  bank  in  Vermont, 
so  Hale  had  been  told  to  make  out  a  new  note  with 


138  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

a  signature  as  nearly  like  the  Colonel's  as  he  could. 
He  often  did  these  things  for  Kilworth.  They 
were  not  included  in  the  theory  of  banking  and 
commerce  as  Dick  had  learned  it  at  Harvard. 
But  in  the  practical  conduct  of  a  bank  his  teachers 
had  told  him  that  he  would  find  certain  varying 
practices,  and  he  had  found  them.  They  consti 
tuted  Mr.  Kilworth's  way,  and  that  was  enough  for 
Dick  Hale.  He  knew,  for  instance,  without  hav 
ing  been  told  by  Kilworth  or  by  the  others  in  the 
bank,  that  the  Kilworth  corporations  were  large 
borrowers  from  the  bank,  and  he  vaguely  suspected 
that  these  loans  represented  Kilworth's  liabilities; 
but  he  reasoned  that  if  the  federal  banking  laws 
hampered  a  man  so  entirely  able  to  pay  as  Boyce 
Kilworth  was  able  to  pay,  from  borrowing  from 
the  bank,  then  naturally  good  banking  would  com 
pel  the  bank  to  adopt  the  very  subterfuges  to  con 
ceal  the  transactions  which  the  bank  used.  So  there 
was  the  paper  of  the  Boyce  Investment  Company, 
and  of  the  various  subsidiary  corporations  or 
ganised  by  Mr.  Kilworth  to  conduct  the  sheet 
metal  works.  But  their  notes  and  obligations  had 
to  be  cleared  out  of  the  way  before  the  examiners 
arrived,  and  other  paper  put  in  the  note  drawer. 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "        139 

EXick  himself  had  borrowed  five  thousand  dollars 
from  a  bank  in  Utica,  New  York,  with  Boyce  Kil- 
worth's  endorsement  upon  the  note  and  had  bought 
some  stock  in  the  Corrugated  Metal  Manufactur 
ing  Company  for  a  song,  at  Mr.  Kilworth's  sugges 
tion,  and  he  had  smiled  when  he  saw  his  rating  one 
day  in  a  commercial  report  as  good  for  $50,000. 
After  that  rating  appeared  Dick  often  gave  Mr. 
Kilworth  his  note  for  rather  large  amounts  to  use 
with  Kilworth's  endorsement  in  the  East.  But  the 
bank  was  paying  eight  per  cent,  semi-annual  divi 
dends  and  its  stock  was  selling  at  one  hundred  and 
fifty  per  cent,  premium;  so  Dick  Hale  bent  over 
his  task  of  fixing  up  the  cash  items  for  the  ex 
aminers  and  damned  the  banking  laws  in  general, 
and  the  rules  in  particular  that  were  making  him 
work  overtime.  Also,  he  resolved  that  he  would 
never  be  a  son-in-law.  But  he  felt  that  if  the 
man  who  had  offered  him  ten  thousand  for  his 
Corrugated  Metal  stock  was  in  earnest,  and  would 
bring  in  the  money  to-morrow,  Dick  Hale  knew  a 
place  : —  a  snap  in  fact  —  where  he  could  invest 
that  ten  thousand  and  turn  it  ten  times  over  in  two 
years.  And  he  dreamed  of  a  day,  within  the  rea 
sonably  near  future,  when  Boyce  Kilworth  might 


GOD'S  PUPPETS 

be  a  mere  father-in-law.  So  he  got  out  a  striking 
imitation  of  Colonel  Longford's  note,  put  a  few 
papers  among  the  morning's  collections  that  looked 
plausible,  as  per  directions  of  Kilworth,  slipped 
something  like  a  hundred  thousand  dollars'  worth 
of  accommodation  paper  into  the  note  drawer 
and  whistling  the  "  Beautiful  Lady  "  between  his 
teeth  at  half-past  six,  squinted  over  a  tentative 
statement  of  the  bank's  three-million-dollar  busi 
ness  for  Mr.  Kilworth's  guidance  the  next  day  that 
looked  like  an  oil  painting  of  prosperity.  He 
called  up  the  Kilworth  home  to  ask  Mr.  Kilworth 
if  he  desired  to  see  the  statement  that  night,  and 
when  Deborah  came  to  the  telephone,  he  played 
with  her  for  two  minutes  or  so  before  letting  her 
put  her  father  on  the  line.  That  night  after  din 
ner  in  the  curious  little  cubby-hole  filled  with  ex 
pensive  unread  books  in  glittering  sets,  that  Kil 
worth  called  the  library,  Dick  and  Boyce  Kilworth 
went  over  the  statement  carefully,  after  their  cus 
tom,  line  upon  line.  At  ten  o'clock  the  banker 
threw  his  hand  down  on  his  desk  to  indicate  that 
he  was  satisfied,  and  called  to  his  daughter,  read 
ing  in  the  living  room,  to  see  that  Dick  got  safely 
out,  while  Boyce  Kilworth  reached  for  his  Bible 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "        141 

to  read  his  evening  chapter  about  the  Lord's  ex 
treme  solicitude  for  them  he  has  chosen  to  honour. 
On  the  wide  veranda  —  twelve  feet  deep  with  its 
massive  pillars  and  heavy  limestone  railings,  the 
youth  and  the  maiden  loitered  for  a  moment,  and 
the  girl  asked  sharply: 

"  Dickie  — •  what  are  you  and  father  up  to  — 
about  that  examiner?  " 

"  Bookkeeping/'  smiled  the  youth. 

"  Bookkeeping?  "  But  he  saw  her  serious  eyes 
in  the  twilight  and  answered  her  frankly: 

'  There's  no  reason  why  you  shouldn't  know. 
It's  this:  Good  banking  and  the  banking  laws 
sometimes  don't  jibe.  We  keep  our  books  one 
way  in  order  to  get  results  and  we  have  to  keep 
our  books  another  way  to  satisfy  the  examiner 
who  isn't  interested  in  results,  but  is  bound  by 
rules;  that  is  all  there  is  in  it.  We  had  a  tip 
from  Atchison  that  an  examiner  was  coming  down 
the  line  to-morrow  and  we're  getting  ready  for 
him." 

"  And  father  is  worried,  Dick  —  I  know 
father." 

Their  eyes  met  for  a  frank  second,  and  Dick 
smiled  and  shook  his  head:  "  Not  a  thing  in  the 


142  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

world  in  it,  Debbie;  he's  just  seventy-four  years 
old  and  —  seventy-four  years  timid  —  that's  all." 

The  girl  put  her  hand  out,  but  withdrew  it,  be 
fore  it  touched  him,  and  then  she  cried:  "  Father 
may  be  everything  else  under  the  shining  sun,  Dick 
Hale  —  but  he  never  was  and  never  will  be  timid." 

He  manoeuvred  himself  into  a  position  near  her, 
where  their  arms  touched.  She  did  not  shrink 
away.  And  they  were  silent  a  moment,  looking 
out  into  the  lawn  below  them.  The  man  whistled 
softly  a  bar  from  some  street  tune,  and  said  gently 
without  turning  to  look  at  her:  "  Nothing  to  it, 
Sis  —  nothing  but  the  baseless  fabric  of  a  dream, 
Debbie."  He  turned  to  her,  reached  out  his  hand, 
took  hers,  shook  it  in  bashful  quickness,  and 
skipped  down  the  broad  stone  steps,  calling  mock 
ingly  :  "  Sleep,  my  pretty  one,  sleep  —  thy  father 
is  watching  his  sheep !  " 

Richard  Hale  walked  home  slowly  through  that 
July  night.  His  mind  was  busy  with  new  trains 
of  thought.  For  the  first  time  he  had  a  curious 
uneasy  feeling  about  Boyce  Kilworth.  All  that 
his  daughter  had  said  that  day  about  him,  her 
warning  that  evening,  had  unsettled  the  young 
man.  And  he  recognised  as  he  ran  down  his  emo- 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "        143 

tions  to  their  source  that  it  was  not  what  had  been 
said  —  but  the  author  of  what  had  been  said  that 
disturbed  him.  The  hair  and  the  eyes  and  the 
teeth  and  the  voice  —  all  for  the  first  time  striking 
him  as  beautiful  —  had  impressed  him ;  had  caught 
his  attention  and  held  it  to  what  the  girl  had 
said.  So  he  ran  it  over  and  over  in  his  mind. 
He  knew  Boyce  Kilworth  measured  everything  by 
its  money  value;  but,  why  not?  Different  men 
had  different  standards  of  value,  he  reasoned;  was 
not  one  standard  as  good  as  another,  and  were  not 
men  of  differing  standards  equally  good  men?  A 
banker  dealt  with  money;  why  not  value  things  by 
the  measure  he  understood?  But  in  his  heart 
some  way — -perhaps  it  was  the  argument  of  the 
hair  and  eyes  and  teeth  and  voice  —  Richard  Hale 
knew  that  his  logic  was  lame.  And  the  last  thing 
he  heard  at  night  as  he  turned  to  sleep  was  a  voice 
crying:  "  Why,  Dick  —  he  even  turns  into  seven 
per  cent,  interest  that  beautiful  model  village  he 
has  made  of  Boyceville !  " 

In  the  night  he  woke  up  wondering  why  the 
year  before  Boyce  Kilworth  had  trusteed  in  four 
separate  trusts  two  hundred  thousand  dollars  each 
for  his  daughters,  and  taken  the  account  and  the 


i44  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

trusts  to  New  York.  He  had  not  questioned  it 
before.  But  again  the  voice  and  the  eyes  and  the 
beauty  of  a  girl's  presence  newly  discovered,  made 
the  query  in  his  heart  persist.  He  woke  in  the 
morning  keen  to  have  the  buyer  for  his  Corrugated 
metal  stock  materialise  and  anxious  to  make  the 
larger  plunge  that  would  bring  him  the  greater  re 
turn —  but  again  the  voice  cried:  "  The  men 
I'd  like,"  and  he  asked  if  she  would  like  a  fellow 
whose  morning  thoughts  were  of  money.  As  he 
dressed  he  heard  his  father  whistling  softly  out 
side  where  Dick  knew  the  elder  man  was  pottering 
around  among  his  garden  flowers  —  probably 
among  his  delphiniums  and  bees  —  playing  the 
old  game  of  plant  breeding.  When  he  went  out 
Dick  found  his  father  standing  proudly  before 
the  giant  stalk  of  blue  that  was  known  of  men  as 
the  Hale  Delphinium.  A  great  splash  of  rich 
colour  was  smeared  across  the  length  of  the  gar 
den  and  Caleb  Hale,  with  his  shirt  sleeves  rolled 
above  his  elbows,  was  poking  the  earth  in  the  bed, 
or  the  next  moment  standing  arms  akimbo,  head 
on  one  side,  squinting  at  the  glory  of  the  proud 
upstanding  gorgeous  blossoms.  The  father 
turned  at  the  son's  approach  and  cried:  "  By  — 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "        145 

Johnnie  —  boy  —  aren't  they  splendid?  And  to 
think  that  all  over  this  world,  Dick  —  everywhere 
—  even  down  in  Australia  and  in  South  America, 
Hale's  Delphiniums  are  splotching  blue  in  gardens 
and  parks  and  flowerbeds ;  and  all  because  I  took 
to  playing  with  the  bees  a  dozen  years  ago,  to  make 
a  flower  that  would  stand  our  dry,  hot  summers. 
Why,  Dick,  they're  as  hardy  as  their  granddad- 
dies,  the  larkspur  —  and  never  will  run  out;  long 
after  I'm  gone  these  things  will  be  gladdening 
the  eyes  of  the  world.  That's  something  —  eh, 
Dick!" 

The  battered,  broken  old  face  lighted  up  in  a 
cracked  smile  of  joy,  and  the  son  asked:  "  But 
have  they  made  you  anything,  pater  —  what  has 
Hale's  Delphinium  netted  you?  " 

The  father's  voice  broke  into  a  chuckling  laugh 
as  he  answered:  "  Why  —  what  do  I  know? 
You  see,  Dick,  we  busted  our  adding  machine  and 
I  lost  my  ready  reckoner  twenty  years  ago,  and  I 
never  installed  a  cost  system."  He  cocked  a 
humorous  blue  eye  at  his  son  as  he  continued: 
"  I  suppose  if  I  counted  my  time  at  fifty  cents 
an  hour,  and  the  time  of  the  bees  at  say  ten  cents 
an  hour,  and  the  interest  on  the  value  of  the  lot 


146  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

compounded  semi-annually,  and  then  stuck  in  thirty 
per  cent,  for  overhead  charges  and  marketing  — 
I'd  have  been  in  the  poorhouse  on  Hale's  Del 
phinium  long  ago."  He  stopped  to  laugh  at  his 
conceit  and  added  seriously:  "Here's  the  way 
I  figure  it,  Dick  —  all  over  the  earth  people  glance 
at  these  big,  jumping  spots  of  blue  flower  and  a 
little  thrill  of  joy  hits  'em.  They  don't  know  why, 
but  I  do.  It's  the  come-back  of  the  soul  to  beauty; 
the  reaction  of  the  infinite  on  the  human  heart. 
Such  ineffable  beauty  no  human  hand  could  make ; 
it's  a  token  of  something  bigger  than  us,  Dick,  in 
the  world  —  God's  visiting  cards  stuck  around  all 
over  the  earth  —  to  let  'em  know  he's  called. 
And,  being  Hale's  Delphiniums,  I'm  travelling  in 
fairly  good  company,  boy!  That's  how  I  figure 
it."  The  old  face,  wrinkled  and  twisted  with  dead 
emotions,  with  the  once  hard  lines  softened,  stared 
up  into  his  son's  face  with  a  glow  of  pride  as  he 
asked :  "  Ain't  that  something,  Dick  —  almost  as 
good  as  Boyce's  millions?  " 

The  night  thoughts  of  the  son  formed  on  his 
lips  and  he  asked:  "  Father,  why  don't  you  like 
Boyce  Kilworth?  What  has  he  ever  done  to 
you?" 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "        147 

The  father  dropped  his  arms  to  his  side,  and 
gazed  at  the  ground,  as  he  answered  musingly: 
"Well  —  I  don't  seem  to  cotton  to  Boyce  —  do 
I,  Dick?'1  He  paused  and  added:  "I  never 
did."  His  head  drooped  reflectively  as  he 
droned  on:  "  Always  got  in  my  gorge  and  made 
me  want  to  heave.  So  kind  of  damn  smoothly, 
evenly  successful!  Dick,"  he  cried,  "look  at 
that  face  —  not  a  wrinkle  —  not  a  retraced  step 
shown,  not  a  temptation  conquered,  not  a  line  from 
an  aching  heart."  The  father  lifted  his  head  and 
cried  passionately :  "  How  God  must  pity  —  per 
haps  even  scorn  —  the  life  that  shines  through 
that  kind  of  a  face !  "  The  old  countenance  was 
turned  to  the  boy's  and  the  father  cried:  "  Oh, 
Dick  —  Dick,  my  boy  —  never  a  shame  to  sting 
his  pride  —  never  a  remorse  to  furrow  his  heart 
—  never  a  fall  to  test  his  strength  —  never  a  fail 
ure  to  harrow  his  soul !  What  did  God  put  us  here 
for,  son,  if  not  to  come  out  stronger  by  our  weak 
nesses,  braver  by  our  retreats,  bigger  by  wrestling 
with  our  meanness,  holier  by  coming  into  love 
through  hate !  Boyce  Kilworth's  ghastly  success 
has  cost  him  all  these  things.  So  some  way  I 
don't  care  for  him.  I  just  kind  of  feel  he's  missed 


148  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

the  whole  meaning  of  life,  and  I'm  agin  him !  " 
The  keen  blue  eyes  searched  the  young  face  for 
a  quiver  of  recognition.  The  son  shook  his  head, 
and  sighed:  "Some  way  I  don't  follow  you, 
pater.  For  the  life  of  me  I  can't  see  what  Mr. 
Kilworth  has  done  to  — " 

"Done?  Done?  Done  — hell,  boy  — that's 
just  it !  He'd  be  better  if  he  had  done,  if  he  would 
do  something  miserable.  I'm  a  poor  damned  sin 
ner,  Dick,  and  I  know  it  —  Lord,  how  I  know  it ! 
But  sin  wasn't  what  I  did  —  so  much,  as  it  was 
what  I  was !  Sin  is  a  symptom  of  a  disease  of  the 
soul  —  and  Boyce's  trouble  is  ingrown.  The  sin 
ner,  Dickie,  is  the  cuss  who  grinds  his  guts  out 
day  by  day  for  material  things  —  for  selfish  things, 
for  measly  finite  things,  and  Boyce's  whole  life  — 
ugh — "  he  shuddered,  "  has  been  one  long  chase 
of  dollars  for  the  sake  of  dollars,  dollars  for  the 
power  of  Kilworth,  dollars  for  the  glory  of  Kil 
worth,  dollars  to  make  Kilworth  the  great  tin  god 
of  a  Providence  in  the  community !  And  the  devil's 
answer  to  all  his  assumption  is  to  set  three  leering 
sons-in-law  forever  before  him  with  their  thumbs 
on  their  noses,  wiggling  their  fingers  at  his 
pride!" 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "        149 

Caleb  Hale  laughed  and  sat  down  on  a  packing 
box  and  chuckled.  "  Aye,"  another  chuckle, 
"  God  will  not  be  mocked  —  God  will  not  be 
mocked."  When  he  had  finished  laughing  he  rose 
and  said:  "  Come  on  to  breakfast,  Dick  —  and 
don't  let  them  fool  you  into  thinking  He  will  be 
either.  Sixty  years  of  bumping  the  world  on  the 
sharp  places  has  taught  me  that,  son  —  and  I  give 
you  that  and  Hale's  Delphinium  as  your  heritage ! 
The  lawyers  can't  bust  the  will  and  take  that  from 
you,  my  boy !  " 

As  he  worked  that  day  in  the  bank,  marching 
and  counter-marching  through  his  accounts  with 
the  examiner,  while  Boyce  Kilworth  sat  at  his  desk 
making  large  Os  on  a  paper  and  watching  the  con 
test  from  the  tail  of  his  eyes,  Dick  Hale  forgot 
the  morning's  talk,  but  in  his  undersoul,  it  pricked 
him  like  a  thorn  and  made  him  dimly  unhappy. 
Only  in  the  late  afternoon,  when  the  examiner  had 
gone,  and  Deborah  Kilworth  came  down  to  the 
bank  in  her  electric  car  to  take  her  father  home, 
did  the  thorn  in  his  conscience  ease  him.  He 
looked  up  and  saw  her  wearing  a  great  bunch  of 
Hale's  Delphiniums;  so  his  own  heart  thrilled  at 
the  beauty  he  could  not  express,  and  their  eyes 


150  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

carried  to  both  hearts  a  wordless  message  that  was 
deep  and  sweet. 

And  all  that  summer  their  hearts  spoke  words 
that  they  dared  not  put  upon  their  lips,  and  each 
was  shy  and  fearful  lest  the  other  misunderstand 
what  both  were  feeling.  Such  is  the  way  with 
love  that  sinks  deeper  than  the  flesh.  For  of  all 
the  unfathomable,  commonplace  mysteries  that  go 
to  make  up  the  unfathomable  commonplace  mys 
tery  of  life,  none  is  more  baffling  than  the  com 
monplace  mystery  of  love.  How  do  hearts  com 
municate  through  the  silences?  Or,  stranger  still, 
how  do  hearts  find  through  the  elaborate  and 
studied  silliness  of  such  small  talk  as  convention 
allows  unpledged  lovers,  the  golden  wire,  laden 
with  things  deeply  beautiful?  Yet  if  lovers  did 
not  speak  through  the  hidden  channels  to  the  heart, 
if  only  spoken  words  were  left  to  life  and  love, 
what  monstrous  —  indeed,  what  hideous  courage 
it  would  take  for  a  lover  to  seek  his  first  kiss ! 
The  truth  is  that  the  lips  are  the  laggards  of 
love ;  they  come  stuttering  along  with  their  empty 
words  long  after  eyes,  and  voice,  and  finger  tips 
—  and  Heaven  only  knows  what  else,  for  therein 
lies  the  mystery  —  have  gone  forth  seeking 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"        151 

eagerly,  and  have  found  the  way  of  the  ineffable 
peace,  and  have  plighted  troth  over  and  over 
again. 

So  during  the  summer  that  followed  that  meet 
ing  in  the  bank,  where  first  their  hearts  glowed  with 
a  new  and  holy  fire  far  below  their  conscious  selves, 
these  two,  going  about  their  daily  round  of  work 
and  play,  were  slowly  and  amid  much  conscious 
amazement  —  after  the  old  commonplace  fashion 
—  meeting  out  in  the  place  of  mysteries  beyond  the 
senses,  and  reading  line  upon  line,  precept  upon 
precept,  here  a  little  and  there  a  little,  the  secret 
meaning  of  each  other's  hearts.  To  transcribe  the 
dialogue  of  lovers  whose  lips  are  sealed,  is  to  set 
down  the  emptiest  chaff  in  language.  Here  they 
meet  at  a  dinner  party,  there  at  tennis,  yonder  at 
the  bank,  and  again,  on  the  street.  And  when 
they  meet  they  fall  to  with  a  will,  threshing  chaff. 
Yet  in  the  chaff,  apart  from  the  words,  hidden  in 
eyes  and  tones  and  touch  lies  the  grain  that  is 
ripening  in  their  hearts.  It  is  all  tearfully  funny 
and  comically  sad  —  this  mystery  of  nest-making 
in  the  heart. 

At  the  end  of  the  summer  of  an  August  even 
ing,  just  before  Deborah  Kilworth  is  to  leave  for 


1 52  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

Radcliffe,  they  are  sitting  together  in  the  deep  ver 
anda  of  the  Kilworth  residence,  listening  to  the 
screeching  night-fiddles  of  the  katydids,  and  the 
zylaphones  of  the  crickets,  and  the  interminable 
crash  of  small  night  sounds  that  affront  the  ear  in 
those  embarrassed  silences  that  come  when  two 
hearts  are  struggling  to  push  back  from  weak  lips 
the  words  not  ready  to  be  uttered.  Finally  talk 
starts  up  —  perhaps  it  is  of  books  —  serious 
books,  very  likely,  for  the  poor  intellect  is  mis 
erably  floundering  to  regain  its  balance ;  or  maybe 
politics  —  fancy  politics  in  a  love  scene,  or  re 
ligion,  which  is  just  as  grotesque,  yet  often  used  to 
fill  the  gaps  that  make  the  silences  that  every  heart 
fears  and  loves  in  times  like  this.  At  the  end  of 
one  of  these  joyously  painful  silences  the  young 
man  broke  out: 

"  Debbie  —  I  wonder  if  you'd  care  to  know  I'll 
make  a  lot  of  money  —  for  me  —  on  my  Okla 
homa  oil  lands  deal?  " 

There  jumped  into  her  consciousness  like  a  trout 
from  a  pool  the  fear  that  perhaps  he  fancied 
money  gave  him  some  status  with  her  and  she 
cried: 

"  Oh  —  no,  I  don't  care,  Dick  —  how  much  you 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "        153 

make  or  how  little.  It's  not  what  money  you 
make  but  what  money  makes  of  you,  that  counts. 
Take  it  if  it  comes  —  speed  it,  if  it  goes  —  and 
you're  safe." 

"I  know  —  I  know,  Debbie,"  returned  the 
youth,  "  only  I  thought  you  hated  money;  so  I  was 
afraid  — " 

"  Yes  —  yes,"  she  answered,  "I  understand, 
Dick.  Money  is  nothing,  I  suppose,  one  way  or 
another,  if  you  consider  it  properly;  but  it  is  liable 
to  become  a  cumulative  poison  in  the  heart.  We 
—  we,  we  —  Dick  —  we  must  not  measure  life 
by  money!  "  The  u  we  "  that  she  spoke  spilled 
from  her  lips  unconsciously.  He  caught  it  up  with 
an  eager:  "  Oh,  Debbie  —  we'll  not !  "  He  re 
peated  "  We'll  not."  But  the  "  we  "  was  spilled, 
the  straw  from  the  heart's  nest  had  tumbled  into 
life,  and  the  girl  went  on  bravely: 

"  Dick  —  you've  been  so  good  to  me  this  sum 
mer;  you've  understood."  She  stopped  and 
looked  into  his  eyes  where  words  were  not  needed, 
then  she  went  on :  "  Dick,  let's  you  and  me  prom 
ise  ourselves  we'll  be  the  kind  of  friends  who 
measure  life  in  joy  —  in  service,  in  —  in  — "  She 
was  pushing  back  from  her  lips  the  obvious  word 


i54  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

and  the  youth  before  her  glowed  happily  into  her 
eyes  as  he  laughed:  "In  —  in  —  oh,  Debbie, 
why  not  use  the  short  and  lovely  word?  " 

She  blushed  and  turned  away  crying  as  she 
pushed  his  hand  back:  "  Oh,  Dickie,  don't  be  a 
fool!  Let's  just  be  friends."  And  so  the  old 
commonplace  mystery  of  love  working  its  miracle 
in  their  lives,  rose  almost  to  their  lips  and  they 
parted  holding  in  their  memories  the  glimpse  they 
had  of  the  straw  from  their  hearts'  nest  that  they 
were  building  busily  in  the  silences. 

And  then  the  autumn,  the  winter  and  the  spring 
went  by,  and  as  the  months  sped  on  they  cut  care 
into  the  young  man's  face  —  care  that  even  the  let 
ters  from  Deborah  Kilworth  could  not  erase.  For 
slowly  he  was  coming  into  the  knowledge  of  good 
and  evil  in  a  bank;  slowly  he  was  finding  the  sham 
and  illusion  behind  Boyce  Kilworth's  respectability. 
The  night  following  the  day  of  Deborah  Kil 
worth's  return  from  Radcliffe,  after  her  ten 
months'  absence,  she  heard  her  father  call  Dick 
Hale  upon  the  telephone  and  summon  him  to  the 
Kilworth  house.  And  later,  from  a  room  wherein 
she  sat  trying  to  read,  a  room  near  by  her  father's 
library,  she  kept  hearing  the  petulant  voice  of  her 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "        155 

father  complaining  in  short  rasping  sentences,  as 
the  younger  man  explained  something,  or  expos 
tulated,  she  was  not  sure  which  it  was.  But  it 
was  evident  that  a  bank  examiner  was  in  town,  on 
his  semi-occasional  visit,  and  that  the  young  man 
was  trying  vainly  to  take  a  stand  against  the  judg 
ment  of  the  elder. 

"  But  I  tell  you  I've  always  bluffed  'em,"  the 
girl  heard  her  father  insist.  And  again  after 
young  Hale  had  gone  over  some  problem  the  old 
banker  snapped:  "  Cheap  bank  clerks,  ap 
pointed  by  cheap  congressmen,  working  for  a 
cheap  politician  in  Washington  who  is  always 
leggin'  for  a  big  job  down  in  New  York  —  I  know 


'em." 


The  girl  tried  to  read  her  book  and  shut  out  the 
clamour ;  and  succeeded  for  a  time,  but  her  father's 
voice  rising  in  a  whine  of  rage,  attracted  her  with : 
'*  I  tell  you,  boy  —  the  only  way  to  win  our  game 
is  to  beat  theirs." 

He  would  not  go  into  the  problem,  whatever 
it  was  that  the  younger  man  was  presenting. 
Finally  the  old  man  broke  out  angrily:  "  Sound 
banking?  Sound  banking?  I've  run  this  bank 
since  seventy-three,  and  I  beat  'em  in  four  panics, 


156  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

and  I  tell  you  —  stick  to  their  rules  —  it's  their 
rules  that  count  —  their  rules  and  regulations.  I 
know  'em  by  heart,  and  I've  never  been  caught 
breaking  a  rule,  and  they  know  it.  Stick  to  their 
rules  on  the  books  and  fool  'em,  and  bluff  'em!  " 
Evidently  young  Hale  tried  to  stop  Kilworth  for 
the  old  man  cried:  "  Ain't  it  my  bank?  Ain't 
it  my  money?  Now,  sir  —  I  have  told  you  what 
to  do  —  go  do  it !  " 

Apparently  the  younger  man  was  picking  up  his 
papers  for  a  long  silence  ensued.  Her  father, 
clearly  piqued  and  fretting,  mumbled:  "  I  know 
how  to  run  that  bank.  My  way  has  been  good 
for  forty  years,  and  I  don't  want  you  to  bring  your 
college  fads  and  isms  of  sound  banking  around 
me."  At  the  door  Kilworth  threw  a  growl  at 
Hale :  "  I  know  my  way,  and  it's  always  won.  I 
shan't  go  trying  your  goody-goody  game  with 
things  like  they  are  now!  " 

In  the  veranda,  where  the  girl  hurried  to  meet 
the  young  man,  she  saw  a  worried,  tired  face. 
Their  hands  met  and  the  handclasp  lingered  as 
they  crossed  the  veranda.  She  asked  anxiously: 
"  What  is  it,  Dick?  "  He  put  her  soft,  yielding 
hand  to  his  face  and  held  it  there  unresisting  a  mo- 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"        157 

ment,  as  one  applying  a  healing  balm,  and  an 
swered  gently:  "  I  can't  go  into  it  all  now,  Debbie 
—  but,  oh,  it  is  so  good  —  so  good  to  know  that 
you  are  here  —  so  near  —  now!  "  On  the  front 
step  he  paused  to  look  into  the  beautiful  face  of  the 
girl  gazing  at  him  intently  and  then  Hale  ex 
claimed:  "Oh,  Deb  —  Deb  —  if  the  pater  in 
there  just  had  the  memory  of  one  time,  when  he 
had  played  a  different  game  and  won,  what  a  big 
help  it  would  be  to-night."  Then  he  turned  and 
left  her. 

It  was  the  summer  when  the  world's  supply  of 
zinc  had  been  poured  into  the  alloy  of  cannons,  and 
that  summer  some  devilish  fate  had  given  Boyce 
Kilworth  a  contract  at  the  Corrugated  Metal  mills 
for  half  a  million  dollars'  worth  of  zinc  tubing, 
and  found  him  without  a  pound  of  zinc  on 
hand,  with  zinc  consorting  with  the  precious 
metals.  Work  was  dragging  at  all  the  other  mills 
in  Boyceville  and  the  old  banker  was  walking  gin 
gerly  and  slowly  through  a  labyrinth  of  chicanery 
that  he  had  built  up  day  by  day  and  month  by 
month  during  forty  years  of  banking.  And  the 
next  morning  came  the  first  warning  shudder  of 
the  coming  earthquake  which  was  to  wreck  the 


i58  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

house  of  Kilworth.  The  first  tremor  startled  the 
bank  when  Colonel  Longford,  cheerfully  hobbling 
into  the  counting  room,  stood  before  the  note  coun 
ter  and  bawled  gaily  across  to  the  clerk  at  the  note 
docket:  "Hi,  there,  you  Hank  Thompson,  son- 
in-law  of  Croesus,  and  keeper  of  the  records  and 
seals  —  come  here."  The  old  voice  piped  glee 
fully.  :t  What  kind  of  a  insti-damn-tution,  are 
you  running  here,  anyway?  "  He  drew  from  his 
pocketbook  a  slip  of  paper  and  waved  it  at  the 
meek  son-in-law  who  stood  wondering  what  blun 
der  he  had  made  this  time :  "  Sending  me  a  notice 
of  a  note  due  that  I  paid  —  God  knows  how  long 
ago." 

The  old  man  rattled  his  cane  on  the  brass  railing 
at  his  feet  and  cried:  "  Oh,  you  bankers  —  I'm 
glad  to  get  it  on  you!  You're  such  an  exacting 
set  of  old  maids,  that  it's  worth  twenty-five  thou 
sand  dollars  to  catch  you  in  an  error."  Thomp 
son  was  flapping  the  leaves  of  his  note  docket.  A 
clerk  near  the  note  cage  had  gone  in  to  look  over 
the  paper  set  out  for  notification.  An  examiner, 
working  on  the  cash  ledger,  dropped  his  pen  and 
shoved  the  clerk  aside,  as  the  Colonel  called  to  the 
back  room  of  the  bank :  "Hi  —  hi  —  hi  —  you, 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"        159 

Boyce  —  you,  Dick  —  why  don't  you  get  some 
clerks  here  who  can  run  a  bank?  "  He  was  laugh 
ing.  "  Boyce  —  come  out  here  and  let's  go  over 
to  Pete's 'and  get  the  cigars;  it's  worth  a  pocket 
full  to  set  my  old  heart  jumping  as  it  did  when  I 
got  this  notice.  Why,  man,  I  haven't  seen  twenty- 
five  thousand  dollars  in  twenty-five  thousand 
years." 

Hale  was  in  the  banking  room,  trying  to  get  in 
front  of  the  examiner  to  reach  the  bundle  of  notes 
in  the  drawer  first.  Kilworth,  gaping  and  pale, 
sat  in  his  room  with  his  hand  trembling  on  his 
desk. 

But  the  examiner  reached  the  note  drawer  well 
ahead  of  Hale,  clicking  the  cage  door  lock  behind 
him.  A  little  group  of  customers  drew  around  the 
Colonel,  smiling  in  anticipation  of  the  fun.  But 
Dick  Hale  was  not  smiling.  He  was  trying  to 
catch  the  Colonel's  laughing  eyes.  In  a  minute  the 
examiner  had  a  note  out  of  the  bundle,  and  shov 
ing  it  across  the  marble  counter  under  the  wicket, 
asked:  "  What  about  this,  Colonel?  " 

Colonel  Longford  eyed  the  paper.  It  was  a 
note  for  $25,000;  it  had  apparently  come  into  the 
bank  for  collection  from  a  New  York  bank,  and 


i6o  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

it  bore  Boyce  Kilworth's  endorsement  across  the 
back.  Vainly  Dick  Hale  coughed  and  tried  to 
divert  the  old  man's  attention. 

The  old  eyes  scanned  the  paper  closely.  Finally 
the  old,  piping  voice  changed  its  note  and  roared : 
"  A  damned  forgery  —  a  damned,  scoundrelly  for 
gery —  why,  Boyce,"  he  cried,  "  see  if  they've  got 
your  signature;  mine's  wrong  there  in  the  J.  I 
never  make  a  J  that  way  —  it  looks  like  that,  but 
I  swipe  the  pen  up  and  this  is  carefully  drawn 
down,  and  I  never  in  my  life  signed  it  John.  I 
always  sign  it  Jno  —  you  know  that !  " 

The  examiner  looked  at  the  Colonel,  and  caught 
Dick  Hale's  eyes  trying  to  reach  the  old  man. 
"  Let's  go  into  the  back  room,  gentlemen,"  said 
the  examiner.  As  they  turned  out  of  the  lobby  of 
the  bank,  the  Colonel  saw  Kilworth's  ashen  gray 
face.  He  looked  up  and  caught  Dick  Hale's  sig 
nal.  But  he  met  the  examiner's  eyes  at  the  same 
instant.  Slowly  through  the  old  brain  a  glimpse 
of  the  truth  made  its  way.  As  he  walked  back  to 
Kilworth's  desk  he  resolved  what  to  do. 

He  lifted  his  keen  old  eyes  to  the  examiner's 
face,  pulled  a  cigar  from  a  case,  snipped  the  end 
off  as  he  sank  into  a  deep  upholstered  chair  and 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"        16 1 

asked:  "  Boyce —  say  —  that  couldn't  be  that 
note  I  asked  you  to  sign  for  me  last  winter  when  I 
hurt  my  hand  —  could  it?  By  George,  I  believe 
I  haven't  paid  that  note  —  now,  have  I  ?  It  was 
for  that  Santa  Fe  stock  I  bought  —  well,  I'm  a 
goat!" 

The  examiner  sniffed.  Kilworth  saw  it.  He 
cleared  his  throat,  paused  a  moment  and  said 
slowly:  "Well,  now  I  don't  just  remember. 
Ask  Mr.  Hale." 

"  We'll  trace  it  back  and  see,"  said  the  examiner, 
putting  the  note  in  a  pocketbook  before  him  and 
rising.  And  it  took  him  just  three  days  after  that 
to  close  the  bank. 

PART  III 

And  in  those  three  days,  Boyce  Kilworth  went 
through  a  Gethsemane  without  faith,  into  a  Gol 
gotha  without  hope.  The  examiner  was  just  clos 
ing  a  two  days'  visit  —  a  visit  rather  longer  than 
the  other  banks  thought  necessary  then  —  at  the 
hour  when  Colonel  Longford  disclosed  his  forged 
note.  When  the  examiner  did  not  go  away  after 
two  days  in  the  Kilworth  bank,  the  clerks  in  the 


1 62  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

other  banks  in  the  town,  and  later  the  directors 
of  the  banks  and  finally  their  friends,  began  whis 
pering.  The  night  after  the  Colonel's  explosion 
in  the  lobby  of  the  bank,  in  half  a  hundred  homes, 
men  were  looking  anxiously  for  old  copies  of  the 
Globe  to  read  the  Kilworth  bank's  last  quarterly 
statement.  Then  the  lights  began  to  glow  on  the 
switchboard  in  the  telephone  office  in  the  residence 
district  at  an  unusual  time  —  between  eight  and 
nine.  A  hundred  quiet  tips  were  whispered  across 
the  lines,  and  a  hundred  others  not  so  quiet  fol 
lowed,  and  by  seven  the  next  morning,  the  news 
was  running  through  the  model  village  of  Boyce- 
ville  in  anything  but  an  orderly  fashion.  At  eight 
a  small  crowd  had  gathered  in  front  of  the  bank 
door  with  its  great  bronze  columns,  and  when 
Boyce  Kilworth  came  down,  half  an  hour  late, 
after  a  night's  tussle  with  the  examiner,  he  saw  the 
crowd,  heard  its  murmur  as  he  went  into  the  side 
door  of  the  bank,  and  there  found  three  examiners 
waiting  for  him.  By  nine  o'clock  the  whole  town 
knew  that  two  extra  examiners  were  in  town,  and 
then  the  crowd  before  the  bronze  columns  outside 
blocked  the  street  car  traffic.  Dick  Hale  stood  at 
the  teller's  window,  when  the  examiners  could 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"        163 

spare  him  from  the  back  room,  and  counted  out 
the  cash,  slowly  and  confidently,  joking  with  the 
people  he  knew,  and  keeping  a  quick  ear  open  for 
developments  behind  him.  He  knew  that  the 
three  examiners  would  get  no  important  informa 
tion  out  of  Grubb,  the  gray-haired,  respectable 
cashier;  for  Grubb  knew  nothing.  And  mentally, 
Dick  catalogued  their  pounding  upon  that  worthy, 
as  a  bass  drum  solo.  But  the  young  man,  who 
had  put  in  ten  hours  with  the  first  examiner,  knew 
that  he  had  a  turn  coming  with  the  two  new  men, 
and  all  the  time  as  he  counted  cash,  he  was  going 
over  the  story  he  had  told,  freshening  it  up,  adding 
details,  trying  and  retrying  his  stepping  stones  of 
fact,  across  the  stream  of  fiction,  to  see  whether 
they  would  hold  him. 

And  all  the  while  Boyce  Kilworth,  ashen  gray 
and  nervous,  was  sitting  at  his  desk,  making  line 
after  line  of  large  Os  on  the  paper  before  him, 
watching  the  current  of  old  friends  and  neighbours 
as  it  washed  through  the  lobby  of  the  bank.  He 
was  dazed  and  helpless.  He  prepared  a  state 
ment  for  the  afternoon  papers,  declaring  that  the 
run  was  a  piece  of  madness,  asserting  that  the 
bank  was  as  sound  as  the  rock  of  Gibraltar. 


1 64  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

By  half-past  ten,  Deborah  Kilworth,  answer 
ing  the  telephone  for  her  mother,  realised  that 
something  unusual  was  happening  at  the  bank. 
Strange  voices  kept  calling  for  her  mother;  some 
times  they  insulted  her,  sometimes  they  wept. 
Her  two  sisters  who  lived  in  town,  came  hurrying 
over,  fear-stricken;  they,  too,  had  been  getting  tele 
phone  calls.  A  school  teacher  whom  Deborah 
knew,  called  while  the  girls  were  talking  together, 
and  the  teacher,  frightened  at  the  possibility  of  los 
ing  her  life's  savings,  begged  Deborah  to  help  her. 
Then  the  Kilworths  knew  the  truth.  The  two 
married  daughters,  in  childish  terror,  planned  to 
leave  town  on  the  noon  train,  and  Mrs.  Kilworth 
advised  the  girls  to  go,  and  then  called  up  the 
society  editor  of  the  Globe  to  tell  her  that  Mrs. 
Hardy  and  Mrs.  Thompson  had  left  on  a  shopping 
tour  for  Kansas  City.  By  the  time  Mrs.  Kilworth 
had  these  things  done,  her  parlour  was  filled  with 
women  —  old  friends  and  neighbours,  working 
women,  church  friends  —  who,  when  she  met 
them,  began  frantic  appeals  to  her  to  help  them 
to  get  their  savings.  And  when  Deborah,  leaving 
her  mother  chirping  sweetly  to  the  frenzied  group, 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"        165 

walked  down  the  front  steps  of  the  house,  she 
passed  a  group  of  men  and  women  at  the  gate. 
In  her  electric  she  sped  to  the  bank.  There  she 
saw  the  crowd,  half  curious,  half  sullen,  and  she 
heard  its  suppressed  growl  when  she  descended 
from  her  electric  car.  She  hurried  through  the 
back  door  into  the  bank  and  found  her  father, 
sitting  dumb  and  stupefied,  making  aimless  marks 
on  the  sheet  of  paper  before  him.  She  went  to 
him  and  asked: 

"Father — Father  —  what  does  this  mean?" 
He  lifted  his  smooth,  fat,  white  face  to  greet 
her  and  cried  impotently:    "  Go  home  —  go  home 
—  I  tell  you !  " 

She  looked  into  the  adjoining  room,  where 
Hale's  desk  was  empty,  then  she  leaned  forward, 
glanced  into  the  banking  room  and,  not  seeing  him, 
asked:  "Where's  Dick  Hale,  Father?"  A 
face  in  the  street,  idly  peering  above  the  sash  cur 
tain  of  the  high  window  beside  Kilworth's  desk, 
may  have  diverted  him,  for  he  turned  away  and  did 
not  answer  her  but,  dropping  his  eyes,  began  a  new 
line  of  Os  on  the  paper  before  him.  Deborah 
heard  voices  in  the  back  room.  She  turned  to  fol- 


1 66  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

low  the  voices,  which  led  her  into  the  room  where 
three  men  at  a  table  were  cross-questioning  young 
Hale. 

When  she  opened  the  door,  the  three  strangers 
rose,  and  she  asked:  "  Will  you  excuse  Mr.  Hale 
for  a  moment?  " 

She  saw  Dick  smiling,  with  his  blue  eyes  glitter 
ing  and  a  flushed  place  on  his  cheek,  and  called: 
"  Just  a  moment,  please,  Dick."  And  he  fol 
lowed  her  into  his  own  office. 

"  Dick  — "  she  caught  his  arm,  "  what  is 
it?" 

"  It's  a  fight  —  Deb,"  answered  the  young  man, 
meeting  her  eyes  eagerly,  "  but  we'll  win  —  I 
think!" 

u  You  think?  Don't  you  know,  Dick?"  she 
asked  abruptly.  Then  she  added  quickly:  "  Dick 
—  has  he,"  she  nodded  toward  her  father's  room, 
"  has  he  led  you  into  any  wrong?  "  The  man 
took  her  hand,  and  said  in  a  low  voice:  "  Debbie 
Kilworth  —  you  must  believe  what  I  say."  She 
nodded,  and  he  went  on:  "  Debbie,  I've  had  to 
do  things  for  him  this  year  that  broke  the  rules 
of  this  game  as  I  would  have  played  it;  but,  oh, 
Debbie,  Debbie,  as  I  — "  he  checked  the  sentence, 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "        167 

u  by  all  that  is  beautiful  between  us,  Deb,  I've 
never  touched  one  penny  for  myself  —  not  one !  " 

"  And  father?  "  she  demanded. 

Into  the  silence  there  in  the  room,  came  the 
even  monotony  of  the  crowd's  mumble  outside  and 
the  ceaseless  shuffle  of  many  feet.  To  the  young 
man  it  seemed  the  dull  complaint  of  the  dying, 
and  he  shuddered  inwardly  as  he  thought  of  the 
town's  dying  faith. 

After  a  moment's  hesitation  he  spoke : 

"  Well  — "  he  paused,  but  her  eyes  called  for 
the  truth  and  he  went  on:  "  He  is  a  heavy  bor 
rower  —  I  can't  say  just  how  heavy."  He  hesi 
tated  again.  "  But  I  feel  he  is  amply  able  to 
pay  —  and  more ;  only  — " 

"  Only  what,  Dick?  —  we  must  have  no  reserves 
now,"  the  girl  persisted. 

"  Only  it  appears  —  you  see  he's  always  been  a 
borrower  from  the  bank  under  various  — "  he 
stopped  again  and  added:  "  devices." 

"  Devices?"  asked  Deborah.  She  caught  the 
buzz  of  the  crowd  —  distant  and  ominous,  though 
low  and  well-controlled  —  a  kind  of  drone ;  then 
she  heard  Dick  saying:  "  You  know,  Debbie,  the 
law  doesn't  permit  him  to  borrow  money  of  his 


1 68  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

own  bank;  so  he  has  had  to  — "  He  did  not  fin 
ish;  the  low  insistent  monody  of  the  crowd  dis 
tracted  him,  and  the  girl  returned  with  a  ques 
tion: 

"  And  did  you  know  it,  Dick —  all  this  time?  " 
And  the  man  answered :  "  Only  a  guess  —  an  un 
easy  guess  —  until  the  last  few  months  never  more 
than  a  fear  that  he  smothered  as  soon  as  he  saw 
it.  But,  Deb  — :  it's  not  his  fight  now  —  so  much 
that  I'm  fighting;  it's  for  all  those  people  out 
there;  it's  for  the  business  faith  of  this  town. 
That's  the  fight  now!" 

In  the  silence  they  both  heard  the  voice  of  the 
distraught  soul  of  the  street;  Talk  —  low-keyed, 
footless  talk,  not  excited,  but  deadly  in  its  con 
fusion  and  dangerous  in  its  latent  power.  Neither 
of  the  young  people  understood  it.  Yet  each  felt 
it,  and  was  ashamed  to  voice  the  dread  that  was  in 
each  heart.  For  a  second  their  hands  clasped 
tightly,  then  she  said:  "  All  right,  Dick,  that's  all 
I  need  to  know !  Good  —  good  friend  of  mine !  " 
She  followed  him  with  worried  eyes  as  he  crossed 
the  hall  and  passed  from  her  sight.  When  she 
came  into  her  father's  room,  he  looked  up  from 
his  desk  and  cried : 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"        169 

u  Go  home !  "  But  she  put  her  coat  in  his 
closet,  and  began  taking  off  her  gloves.  Two 
men,  young  working  men,  had  climbed  the  tele 
graph  pole  outside  Kilworth's  window,  and  were 
pointing  at  him. 

"  The  girls,"  she  said,  "  have  gone  to  Kansas 
City."  He  turned  to  avoid  the  intruding  gaze  of 
the  men  on  the  pole,  and  started  to  pull  down  the 
shade,  but  stopped.  He  did  not  speak  for  a  mo 
ment,  then  sighed  and  said : 

"  Well  —  it's  just  as  well!"  Into  his  room 
came  the  nerve-wracking  hum  and  rustle  of  the 
crowd.  The  crowd's  voice  formed  a  sort  of  un- 
derconscious  stratum  of  their  talk,  subtly  affecting 
its  character. 

"  Father,"  she  asked,  sitting  beside  him,  "  can't 
Joel  Ladgett  help  you  with  some  of  his  old  friends 
in  Washington?  " 

The  staring  faces  above  him  seemed  to  annoy 
him,  and  he  did  not  answer.  "  Well,  Father,  how 
about  Toney  Delaney?  —  he's  effective.  He 
might  — " 

The  whine  of  a  car  on  a  curve,  a  policeman's 
shout  clearing  the  car  track,  startled  the  girl,  and 
her  father  looked  up. 


1 70  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

u  Joel's  tried  and  tried,"  the  old  man  retorted 
wearily.  "  And  Toney's  tried  and  tried,  and  my 
New  York  friends,  they've  tried  and  tried !  "  He 
sat  looking  at  the  symmetrical  Os  on  the  paper  be 
fore  him,  then  broke  out:  "  It  used  to  be  that  in 
business,  business  men  had  influence;  business  men 
could  help  business  men  in  our  government.  Busi 
ness  men  once  were  our  government."  He  paused 
heavily.  She  touched  his  arm  reassuringly,  but  it 
was  a  mechanical  gesture.  For  her  heart  was  be 
ginning  to  feel  the  tragedy  gathering  outside,  in  the 
slow,  hopeless  death  of  the  town's  faith  in  her 
father. 

He  began  again:  "  But  that  scepter  has 
passed,"  and  repeated  the  words  monotonously; 
and  then  continued  querulously:  "These  three 
harpies  here  —  these  examiners  —  what  do  they 
know  about  business?  They're  out  of  sympathy 
with  business  men.  That  scepter  has  passed!" 
he  cried  with  a  weary  finality,  dropping  his  hand 
upon  the  mahogany  board.  They  sat  listening  to 
the  dull  murmur  of  the  crowd  —  a  kind  of  deliri 
ous  reiteration  of  one  meaningless  note,  until  a 
clerk  from  the  clearing  house  came  in.  From 
his  bundle  of  checks,  he  drew  one  for  $7,000  and 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"        171 

put  it  on  the  desk  before  the  banker.  The  girl 
saw  that  it  was  signed  with  her  father's  name, 
payable  to  his  son-in-law,  Griffin.  Kilworth 
picked  it  up,  looked  at  the  signature  carefully,  and 
threw  it  down,  shaking  his  head  at  the  clerk. 

"  Your  account  is  overdrawn,  sir,  as  it  is,  and 
they  said — "  hesitated  the  clerk.  Kilworth 
glanced  toward  the  pole  where  the  men  had 
perched  outside.  The  men  were  gone. 

"  They  told  you  not  to  cash  any  more  of  my 
checks?"  asked  Kilworth,  nodding  toward  the 
back  room,  where  the  examiners  had  Dick  Hale 
on  the  rack. 

'*  Well  — "  the  clerk  answered,  stopping,  and 
added :  "  Not  until  this  examination  was  — " 

"  All  right,  throw  it  out  —  throw  it  out !  "  cried 
Kilworth  petulantly. 

The  clerk  withdrew  and  Deborah  asked: 
"  Father,  was  that  your  check?  " 

"  No,"  answered  her  father,  putting  his  hands 
on  the  desk  and  dropping  his  head  forward,  "  No, 
Debbie  —  that  was  Griffin's  —  Mary's  husband 
—  Mary's  husband !  "  he  moaned  under  his  breath. 

The  girl  persisted:  "  And  he's  got  the  money 
on  it?" 


1 72  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

"  Yes,"    returned   the    father,    "  he's    got   the 
money  on  it;  and  probably  spent  it  twice  over  by 


now." 


"And  that  is  forgery,  and  you  can't  help?" 
the  girl  inquired  anxiously. 

"  I  couldn't  help  him  if  it  was  $70  instead  of 
$7,000  —  now!"  His  words  had  the  effect  of 
closing  the  episode,  and  the  two  sat  listlessly  while 
the  purposeless  roar  from  the  street  filled  the 
break  in  their  talk.  At  length,  as  though  he  could 
stand  the  crowd's  slow  tearing  at  his  nerves  no 
longer,  the  father  beat  his  hands  despairingly  on 
the  desk  and  cried:  "  He  has  no  money,  and  she 
has  no  money!  " 

"No  money?  Why,  Father  —  I  thought  you 
told  us  all  a  year  or  so  ago,  that  our  money  was 
segregated  in  trusts  for  us?  " 

"  Gone  —  gone  —  gone,"  he  answered  miser 
ably.  "  I  turned  it  all  in  to  the  bank  last  night 
—  all  of  it !  "  Again  he  looked  quickly  and 
fiercely  at  the  window,  and  stopped  as  if  in  the 
midst  of  a  sentence  that  he  feared  to  finish.  The 
girl  cried  exultingly: 

"  Oh  —  but  I'm  proud  of  you  for  that !  "  The 
father  looked  out  of  the  window  of  his  soul  at  her 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "        173 

as  from  the  dead,  and  mourned:  "  But  the  girls 
—  the  poor,  helpless  girls !  What  can  they  do, 
what  can  they  do  without  money?  " 

"What  have  they  done  with  money,  Father? 
Just  ask  yourself  that!"  replied  the  daughter 
quietly,  adding:  "Money  got  them  their  hus 
bands  ;  it  could  do  nothing  more  horrible  —  now 
could  it?" 

He  did  not  heed  her  but  went  on  in  self-pity: 
"  Joel  Ladgett  won't  come  in,  and  I  had  to  send 
for  Toney  Delaney;  and  they  say  that  the  whole 
force  down  at  the  mills  quit  work  an  hour  ago, 
and  is  coming  up  here  to  draw  their  money! 
And  just  before  you  came  in,  I  saw  Brother  Ver- 
non  in  here  drawing  out  the  church  money  —  the 
church  money.  And  I  sit  here  and  take  it  —  I 
who  have  made  them  all  —  I  take  it." 

He  was  silent  a  long  time;  then  he  burst  out: 
"  '  Is  thy  servant  a  dog  that  he  should  do  this 
thing?  '  A  soft  thud  of  mud  on  the  glass  pane, 
and  a  shadow,  directed  their  eyes  to  the  window. 
Through  the  thin  silk  sash  curtain,  they  saw  some 
one  chasing  a  boy  through  the  crowd.  Neither 
the  father  nor  the  daughter  spoke  until  the  break 
caused  by  the  incident  outside  had  been  closed  by 


174  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

the  rise  of  the  shallow,  weary  voice  of  the  crowd, 
resuming  its  interminable  complaint.  Then  the 
girl  said:  "  Father,  you  must  come  with  me!  " 
And  because  his  resistance  had  been  broken  by 
the  long,  shameful  hours  when  he  had  crumbled 
weakly  before  the  three  examiners,  he  yielded 
rather  feebly  and  followed  her  through  the  back 
door  of  the  building  to  her  car. 

Late  in  the  afternoon,  he  sent  for  Toney  De- 
laney  and  they  talked  together  for  half  an  hour. 
And  that  night,  after  Dick  Hale  had  gone  through 
another  four  hours  on  the  examiners'  rack,  De- 
laney  brought  through  the  alley  to  the  basement 
entrance  of  the  bank,  a  cartload  of  iron  washers 
of  assorted  sizes,  and  explained  to  Hale  what  Mr. 
Kilworth  desired.  He  thought  a  showing  of  cur 
rency  in  the  bank  window  might  disperse  the  mob 
at  the  bank  doors,  and  with  the  mob  gone,  he  felt 
that  he  might  work  out  some  solution  of  his  prob 
lem. 

Young  Hale  took  in  the  washers,  told  the  ex 
aminer  in  charge  of  Boyce  Kilworth's  hope,  called 
the  examiner's  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  cur 
rency  on  hand  was  really  far  above  the  legal  re 
serve,  and  that  the  little  depositors  would  not  ma- 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"        175 

terially  affect  the  bank's  security  if  all  of  them 
withdrew.  The  examiner  smiled,  and  nodded  his 
consent. 

So  after  reading  in  the  morning  papers  Boyce 
Kilworth's  hopeful  statement,  made  to  the  report 
ers  the  night  before,  the  crowd  about  the  bank, 
when  the  curtain  went  up  in  the  morning  at  nine 
o'clock,  was  further  encouraged  by  the  sight  of  a 
great  heap  of  currency  sacks,  filled  with  bulging 
discs,  and  flowing  out  of  the  end  of  each  sack  on 
the  pile  —  man  high  —  was  a  flood  of  gold  coins ; 
a  cascade  of  gold  in  the  bank  window,  flanked  and 
garnished  with  fat  bundles  of  paper  money.  It 
was  easy  to  estimate  from  the  figures  on  the  sacks, 
that  half  a  million  dollars  was  lying  there  in  the 
window.  Boyce  Kilworth  came  down  town  in  his 
limousine,  stepped  ponderously  out  of  it  at  the 
bank  door,  and  smiled  like  a  preoccupied  Provi 
dence  at  the  throng  that  stood  staring  into  the 
golden  heap  in  the  window.  He  walked  up  the 
steps  and  into  the  side  door  of  the  bank  building, 
through  a  crowd  that  was  almost  respectful. 

But  the  morning's  grist  of  telegrams  had 
brought  to  the  examiners  a  fresh  list  of  the  Kil 
worth  liabilities;  and  at  nine  o'clock  all  the  mills 


1 76  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

and  industries  of  Boyceville  sloughed  into  the 
wreck,  and  a  line  of  workmen  and  women  filed  into 
the  bank  when  it  opened.  At  half-past  nine  Dick 
Hale  appeared  at  the  front  window,  carelessly 
picked  up  a  sack  of  currency,  shook  it  out,  and  a 
flood  of  gold  eagles  shimmered  down  the  cascade. 
The  crowd  smiled  as  he  took  a  scoop  and  scooped 
up  a  tray  full  of  eagles  —  a  mere  drop  from  the 
flood  —  and  carted  the  tray  back  into  the  teller's 
cage.  Again  at  ten  he  did  the  same  thing,  and 
this  time  the  crowd  tried  a  faint  squeak  of  a 
cheer.  The  cheer  heartened  up  the  clerks;  but 
still  the  sorry-looking  line  trailed  its  weary  way 
past  the  paying  teller's  window.  A  few  minutes 
after  Dick  Hale  had  brought  the  second  scoop  full 
of  gold  from  the  window,  Kilworth,  heartened  by 
the  thready  little  cheer,  had  stepped  to  the  front 
window  of  the  bank  and  looked  at  the  crowd.  A 
few  hats  waved  to  him.  His  vanity  pushed  him 
to  the  front  door,  and  there  was  again  a  faint  yip, 
as  of  half  suppressed  cheers.  Then  Boyce  Kil 
worth  gave  the  crowd  his  smile  —  his  forced, 
steely  smile.  Whereupon,  Dick  Hale  became  con 
scious  that  Henry  Thompson  was  making  his  way 
from  his  ledger  to  the  front  of  the  bank.  Dick, 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"        177 

in  the  teller's  cage,  could  not  see  the  satisfied  smile 
on  the  poor  son-in-law's  face,  as  Thompson  winked 
at  the  clerks  near  the  front  window.  But  when 
Dick  saw  Thompson  approaching  the  sacks,  mount 
ing  to  the  box  behind  the  sacks,  lifting  his  arms  as 
if  to  touch  the  sacks,  Dick  turned  from  his  window 
and  called  wildly:  "  Get  away  —  get  away  from 
there !  "  Thompson's  hands  gripped  the  bottom 
of  a  sack  and  Dick  yelled:  "  For  God's  sake  — 
take  that  fool  from  the  window." 

But  Thompson  smirked  back,  saying:  "  I  want 
to  make  'em  cheer  again  for  the  old  man,"  and  as 
Dick  cried  madly :  "  Drop  it  —  drop  it !  Oh, 
oh  —  drop  it !  "  he  saw  Thompson  take  two  sacks 
by  their  bottom  corners,  shake  them  viciously,  and 
then  Hale  saw  the  two  gray  streams  of  steel  wash 
ers  pass  down  upon  the  golden  flood. 

Kilworth  did  not  see  what  was  happening  inside 
the  window.  But  he  saw  the  face  of  the  crowd 
change,  grow  puzzled,  and  he  heard  a  dreadful 
cry  —  shrill  and  high  and  wicked.  Then  came 
a  wild  roar  and  before  he  could  move,  someone 
had  pulled  him  half  falling  down  the  steps  of  the 
bank,  and  a  score  of  voices  were  crying:  "  Hang 
him  —  hang  him!  "  After  that  life  was  a  blur 


178  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

of  awful  impressions.  The  fall  into  the  street, 
and  the  rope  —  the  horrible  bruise  of  it  under  his 
ear  —  these  things  he  remembered.  But  the  cut 
on  his  face,  the  scratch  on  his  neck,  the  bruises 
on  his  arms,  and  the  loss  of  his  coat  and  shirt, 
and  the  great  tear  up  his  trousers  leg,  all  came  to 
him  when  his  mind  was  too  distraught  to  record 
impressions  in  memory.  So  when  the  policemen 
brought  him  into  the  bank,  a  bleeding,  half-naked, 
sobbing  old  man  —  he  who  had  walked  Constitu 
tion  Street  so  proudly  for  fifty  years  —  he  fell  in  a 
shamed  heap,  half  conscious  and  afraid,  in  his 
great  chair,  and  shook  in  hysteria  and  terror. 

The  front  windows  of  the  bank  were  broken. 
The  men  outside  had  rescued  the  veneer  of  gold 
from  the  pile  in  the  windows,  but  the  mob  kept 
surging  in,  and  only  pistol  shots  from  the  ex 
aminers  stopped  the  intruders.  Dust  from  falling 
plaster  was  in  the  air  and  the  roar  of  the  balked 
crowd  came  like  the  bark  of  some  rabid  beast, 
into  the  ears  of  the  group  that  stood  around  the 
figure  that  was  Boyce  Kilworth,  huddled  in  his 
heavy  throne-like  chair. 

Then  in  due  course  they  took  him  home.  A 
squad  of  mounted  policemen  appeared  at  the  side 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"        179 

door  of  the  bank,  and  the  mob  hooted.  When 
Kilworth,  supported  by  the  policemen,  limped  to 
his  car,  he  heard  the  crowd  cat-calling  and  hiss 
ing.  The  horsemen  about  his  car  tried  to  screen 
him  from  the  jeering  throng;  and  when  he  was 
gone  the  baffled  rioters  stayed  behind  in  the  street 
and  howled  their  rage  out. 

So  Boyce  Kilworth  rode  out  of  Constitution 
Street.  An  hour  after  he  was  gone,  the  examiner 
in  charge  pasted  this  notice  on  the  yellow  pine 
boards  that  marked  the  place  where  the  window 
had  been: 

"  This  bank  is  closed,  by  order  of 
the  comptroller  of  the  currency. 
"  S.  HORTON, 

"  Temporary  Receiver.'* 

The  evening  papers  carried  the  story  of  the  mob, 
and  were  kind  to  Boyce  Kilworth;  they  even 
played  up  in  big  type  his  statement  that  the  bank 
was  sound;  that  it  would  pay  its  depositors  in  full. 
The  word  "  arrest  "  was  the  only  unfriendly  word 
in  the  evening  papers,  and  Kilworth's  friends  re 
sented  it  loudly  on  the  streets,  and  in  the  newspaper 
office  that  evening. 


1 8o  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

When  Dick  Hale  went  home  that  night  he  found 
his  mother  in  the  midst  of  one  of  her  clamorous 
cataclysmic  tantrums;  the  bank  failure  seemed  to 
have  started  her,  but  her  grievances  were  running 
back  to  events  thirty  years  before,  and  the  son  ate 
his  evening  meal  in  shame  and  silence.  At  eight 
o'clock  Colonel  Longford  came  hobbling  in  — 
plump  into  the  midst  of  a  particularly  rampant 
tirade  from  Mrs.  Hale.  She  stood  glaring  at  the 
Colonel  a  fierce  moment,  then  vanished,  and  Caleb 
Hale  looked  up  unruffled  and  began  to  hum: 

"  Sister,  thou  art  mild  and  lovely 
"  Gentle  as  the  summer  breeze," 

At  the  end  of  the  stanza  he  paused  to  sigh. 

"Well,  Colonel?  So  that's  the  end  of  Boyce 
Kilworth!" 

"  Poor,  poor  Boyce,"  replied  the  Colonel,  "  I 
spent  the  afternoon  with  him,  and  it  seemed  to 
help  him  to  talk  —  to  talk  it  all  over  from  the  be 
ginning;  from  the  time  when  he  helped  to  stuff  the 
ballot  box,  and  farmed  out  the  county  money." 
The  Colonel  got  out  two  black  cigars,  and  the  old 
men  lighted  them. 

"  Boyce,"   resumed  the   Colonel,   sitting  tilted 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "        181 

back  in  a  chair,  peering  through  uplifted  bony 
knees  at  the  universe,  "  Boyce  hasn't  got  it  yet. 
Lord  —  Lord,  why  couldn't  he  break  the  tether 
—  the  thing  that  bound  him,  limited  him,  baffled 
him,  and  now  is  killing  him.  Just  a  little  beyond 
him,  just  outside  the  circle  that  he  trod  and  maybe 
strained  to  break  from,  lay  greatness  and  happi 
ness.  If  he  could  only  —  only  have  had  a 
heart!" 

"Taking  it  rather  hard  —  I  guess?"  asked 
Caleb  Hale.  Dick  went  to  his  room  and  did  not 
hear  the  Colonel's  further  lesson  and  collect  upon 
the  day's  events.  The  Colonel  smoked  a  while 
and  answered: 

'  Yes  —  damn  —  hard !  That  other  Pharisee, 
condemned  to  simmer  forever  in  his  own  juice  on 
the  trashpile  outside  Jerusalem,  is  having  a  toler 
ably  comfortable  time,  compared  with  Boyce, 
Cale!" 

"  Kind  of  wants  his  money  back  —  I  take  it?  " 
suggested  Hale. 

"  Yes,  that  too,"  returned  the  Colonel. 
;<  Wants  his  money,  and  his  power,  and  his  Provi 
dential  relation  to  the  town  all  back.  But  his  girls 
are  left  penniless,  and  he  thinks  they're  ruined." 


1 82  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

The  Colonel  mused,  "  And  I  guess  they  are  just 
about  ruined  without  money  —  the  kind  he's  raised 

—  all  but  Debbie.     And  he's  worried  about  Mrs. 
Kilworth  —  the  dear  old  canary,  what'll  she  do  for 
pepper-grass  and  cuttlebone,  outside  the  golden 
cage.     You  see,  money  —  just  sheer,  raw  money 
has  been  his  dependence,  and  his  family's  depend 
ence,  and  when  it's  gone  —  it's  the  God's  truth 

—  what  is  there  to  him  or  them  without  it?  " 

"  Hell?  —  ain't  it?  "  came  back  Caleb  Hale  in 
the  silence. 

"  And  six  to  carry,  Cale !  "  assented  the  Colonel. 
"  But  that  isn't  the  worst  of  it  —  as  I  started  to 
tell  you.  He  sits  there  slumped  all  over  mentally 
and  morally  —  without  faith  in  man  or  God,  or 
himself  —  bewailing  the  fact  that  he  has  ruined 
the  lives  of  thousands  of  people.  I  says: 

"  *  Boyce,  you  can't  ruin  people  by  taking  money 
from  them  —  not  even  all  their  money.'  He 
stared  at  me  as  though  I  was  mad,  and  moaned 
on.  Then  I  says: 

"  '  Boyce,'  sez  I,  *  Boyce,  can't  you  get  it 
through  your  head  that  other  people  aren't  made 
or  unmade  by  money?  Suppose  you've  taken  all 
they've  got  —  some  of  'em  —  lots  of  'em,  maybe. 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"        183 

They'll  feel  the  slice  of  the  knife  and  it  will  hurt 
like  sixty  —  but  only  for  a  day  or  a  week  or  a 
month  or  a  year.  They'll  adjust  themselves; 
their  life's  philosophy  will  make  them  happy  or 
unhappy  entirely  independent  of  this  money  you've 
taken!' 

"  He  kept  on  weaving  back  and  forth,  and 
didn't  hear  it.  I  tell  you,  Cale,  you  couldn't  get 
the  truth  of  life  into  him  with  an  axe !  And  that's 
the  real  hell  up  there  at  Boyce's.  He's  frying  on 
the  hot  griddle  of  a  remorse  that  he  has  ruined 
ten  thousand  lives  irrevocably,  and  forever,  so 
twenty  thousand  hands  are  pressing  him  down  on 
the  bars  of  that  grid  and  his  agony  is  sickening !  " 

The  old  man  breathed  hard  as  he  remembered 
what  he  had  seen,  and  he  spat  out  a  pious  damn 
of  sympathy.  "  He  tells  me  he  can't  pray,  and  he 
believes  his  God  has  forsaken  him,  and  that  it 
doesn't  make  any  difference  what  he  does  now." 
The  Colonel  smoked  a  while  and  said:  "  Cale, 
in  the  war,  I  saw  men  kill  each  other  fighting  hand 
to  hand.  I've  seen  men  walk  right  up  to  death 
in  front  of  the  guns.  But  I  never  saw  a  man  lose 
his  God  before.  I'm  sorry  for  him  —  poor 
Boyce  —  I'm  sorry  as  the  devil  for  him,  Cale." 


1 84  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

Hale  shifted  his  position  in  his  chair  and  an 
swered  harshly: 

"  Well  —  I'm  not."  The  two  pairs  of  old  eyes 
met,  and  Hale  went  on:  "Colonel  —  did  you 
ever  think  of  the  other  loss  that  this  failure  brings 
to  men  —  the  loss  of  faith?"  He  stood  musing 
a  moment,  then  lifted  up  his  face  and  went  on, 
abashed:  "  I  don't  care  how  much  money  I  won 
in  the  old  game  —  back  in  the  old  days ;  though  I 
did  win  —  more  or  less."  His  face  slowly  red 
dened  in  shame  as  he  went  on  in  a  subdued  voice : 
"  But,  Colonel  —  when  I  wake  up  in  the  night  — 
from  a  deep  sleep,  with  my  soul  all  washed  of  the 
day  stains  —  then  I  see  what  I  was  in  those  days, 
what  my  winning  meant  to  thousands  who  saw  me 
win  —  neighbours,  friends,  young  boys  —  a  whole 
community  —  I  debauched  'em,  cut  into  their  faith 
in  the  moral  government  of  this  world,  by  lying 
and  stealing  and  cheating  and  winning  and  win 
ning  —  getting  away  unscathed  of  God  and  man 

—  and  that's  what  shrivels  my  soul  in  abasement 

—  that's  what  makes  me  cry :    '  God,  be  merciful 
to  me,   a  sinner!'     I  tell  you,   Colonel,"   cried 
Hale  angrily,  "  it's  not  what  a  hypocrite  does,  not 
what  he  gets  out  of  life,  that  makes  him  hated; 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "        185 

it's  what  he  is,  and  the  poison  to  our  faith  that  he 
spreads  —  that's  why  men  picture  him  as  a  snake ! 
And,  by  the  eternal,  that's  why  — " 

"  That's  why  you're  not  sorry  for  Boyce?  "  in 
terrupted  the  Colonel. 

"  That's  why  I've  watched  him  year  after  year, 
a  great  whited  sepulchre  —  doing  all  that  I  used 
to  do,  but  shamming  all  that  men  at  their  best 
would  be;  and  that's  why  I've  dreaded  to-day, 
like  the  coming  of  a  terror  —  to-day  when  all  his 
sham  is  exposed,  and  men  have  lost  faith  in  — 
in—" 

"  I  know,  Cale,  I  know,"  said  the  Colonel 
gently. 

"  N  —  no  —  perhaps  you  don't  know  all  —  not 
all,  Colonel.  It's  this :  I  have  in  me,  bigger  than 
a  horse,  a  desire  to  restore  the  faith  of  this  town 
in  that  man;  I'd  give  my  immortal  soul  to  do  it  — 
for  my  soul's  not  important.  Until  a  man's  will 
ing  to  send  his  soul  to  hell  for  his  creed,  it  isn't 
much  of  a  creed,  anyway.  But  —  Colonel  —  I've 
been  thinking  over  a  plan.  I  should  have  called 
you  up  if  you  hadn't  come  in.  Maybe  I  can 
help  —  maybe  I  haven't  lived  in  vain.  If  I  could 
only  feel— " 


1 86  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

The  telephone  rang,  cutting  short  Hale's  sen 
tence.  Dick  Hale  was  called  from  his  room  to 
answer  it,  and  in  the  bustle  of  his  leaving 
on  the  summons  of  the  telephone  the  thread  of 
Hale's  discourse  was  cut,  and  the  two  cronies  fell 
to  gossiping  about  the  practical  affairs  of  the  bank 
—  its  assets  —  and  what  they  were,  and  its  liabili 
ties  as  each  had  heard  of  them  through  Kilworth 
and  young  Dick. 

Dick  Hale  went  out  in  response  to  a  call  that 
said  over  the  phone:  "  Dick  —  Dick  —  is  this 
you  ?  Father  insists  on  seeing  you  to-night.  He 
says  he  needs  you.  Won't  you  come  up  right 
away?  " 

When  Deborah  Kilworth  heard  far  down  the 
street  the  familiar  step  of  Dick  Hale,  she  rose 
from  her  porch  swing  in  the  veranda,  and  stood 
at  the  top  of  the  steps  that  led  into  the  garden, 
and  ran  eagerly  to  meet  him  when  she  heard  him 
at  the  gate.  She  put  out  a  hand  to  welcome  him, 
and  he  would  have  kept  it  in  his,  but  she  whis 
pered:  "Don't,  Dick  —  every  other  bush  here 
is  a  policeman."  But  she  did  take  his  arm,  and 
he  felt  the  fugitive  pressure  she  gave  as  they 
walked  toward  the  veranda. 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"        187 

They  stopped  in  the  heavy  dusk  of  the  veranda 
a  moment,  and  talked  in  whispers.  "  Oh,  Dick 

—  you  good  boy  —  I'm  so  glad  you're  here!" 
the   girl  said,   still  holding  to   his  arm,   as   she 
added:     "All  the  afternoon  and  evening — I've 
wanted  you ;  it's  been  so  horrible  —  this  evening 
worse  than  to-day;  yes,  Dick  —  worse  than  to-day. 
Father  has  changed  so.     I  couldn't  very  well  send 
for  you.     I  had  no  excuse.     And  now  that  fa 
ther's  sent  —  Oh,  Dick  — •  I'm  so  afraid  of  father 

—  the  way  he  is  now." 

"Is  he  —  worse  —  sick,  I  mean?"  whispered 
the  young  man. 

"  Sick  ?  "  answered  the  girl.  "  Sick !  —  Why, 
if  he  was  just  sick — .or  even  dead  —  but  he's 
changed  so.  I  don't  know  father  as  he  is !  He 
sits  in  there  cursing  —  my  father  —  why,  Dick 

—  I  don't  believe  he  ever  uttered  an  oath  in  his 
life,  and  he  sits  in  there  cursing  everything,  and 
everybody  —  with  some  kind  of  a  demon  glaring 
out  of  his  eyes,   and  he's   sent   for  you."     She 
looked  intently  up  into  the  strong,  careworn  face 
of   the   young  man    and   then   went   on:     "I'm 
frightened,    Dick  —  frightened  —  I    don't   know 
why  —  maybe  for  you;  perhaps  for  father  or — " 


1 88  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

Again  she  stopped,  and  drew  the  young  man 
deeper  into  the  shadow,  clasped  his  hand  and  spoke 
again:  "Oh,  Dick  —  promise  me  you  won't  — 
no  matter  what  father  says  —  break  any  more  — 
any  more  rules  for  him!  Promise  me  that, 
Dick!" 

A  flapping  curtain  startled  them;  but  the  girl 
stood  before  the  door,  and  pleaded  with  her  eyes. 
The  young  man  was  puzzled.  "  Why,  Debbie  — 
you  shouldn't  bind  me  in  advance.  Your  father 
has  made  all  but  a  son  of  me  —  I  shouldn't  prom 
ise  —  not  in  advance,  Deb  — " 

"  But  when  you  see  him,  Dick  —  you'll  under 
stand —  father  —  poor,  poor — " 

"  Debbie  — "  cried  a  harsh,  strident  voice  from 
the  house,  "  didn't  I  hear  that  young  Hale  come 
up  the  steps?  " 

'  Yes,  Father  —  he's  coming,"  answered  the 
girl.  And  she  led  Dick  Hale  into  the  hall, 
through  the  darkened  living  room  back  to  the  li 
brary. 

"  Get  out  —  you — ,"  the  father  snarled  to  the 
daughter  as  Hale  came  into  the  circle  of  the  study 
lamp,  "  and  mind  you  stay  out,"  he  added,  "  and 


'THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "         189 

don't  come  around  listening  to  what  ain't  none 
of  your  business !  " 

When  she  had  gone  Boyce  Kilworth  stared  sav 
agely  up  at  the  drawn,  tired  face  of  the  man  be 
fore  him.  "  Criminal  charges,"  he  growled, 
"  criminal  charges  against  me;  that's  what  Toney 
Delaney  seen  down  at  the  newspaper  offices  from 
them  damn  vultures  of  examiners !  "  The 
younger  man  was  silent  in  a  pause,  and  Kilworth 
bawled  out:  "Well?  —  well? —  do  you  think 
I'm  going  to  stand  it?  —  me  ?  —  No,  by  God,  I'm 
not !  I  never  touched  a  pen  to  paper  and  you  know 
it;  they  haven't  got  nothing  —  not  a  damn  scratch 
of  a  pen  on  me.  Not  on  me !  "  he  cried,  shaking 
both  his  great  fists  angrily,  and  wincing  as  his 
bruised  arm  caught  him. 

Dick  Hale,  standing  in  amazement,  began  look 
ing  for  a  chair  as  he  said:  "Well,  Mr.  Kil 
worth,  I  suppose  —  I  mean,  naturally  I 
thought  — " 

"  Who  told  you  to  sit  down,"  snapped  the  old 
canine  voice.  "Listen  here,  boy!  I'm  an  old 
man.  I've  been  bled  by  them  damn  leeches  down 
there  at  the  bank  out  of  all  my  money  —  all 


190  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

my  money,"  he  shouted.  "  All  my  girls'  money! 
All  my  interest  in  the  mills,  in  the  Investment 
Company  —  everything  I  got,  and  this  evening 
they  came  up  here  and  talked  me  out  of  this  house 

—  the  roof  over  my  gray  head;  an'  I  give  it  to 
'em !     And  still  I'm  a  quarter  of  a  million  short 

—  and  so  they  run  to  the  reporters  and  talk  about 
criminal  charges,  and  get  it  to  Toney  Delaney!  " 

"  Now,  what  can  I  do,  Mr.  Kilworth  —  to 
help?  I  want  to  help,  sir,"  said  young  Hale. 

"  Well,  boy  —  now  listen !  I'm  an  old  man. 
You're  young.  This  is  my  defence  to  these  crim 
inal  charges:  I  was  no  bookkeeper;  I  was  no 
penman.  You  was  —  both,  and  you  got  me  into 
this.  That's  my  defence,  sir.  Do  you  get  my 
idea?"  He  was  gazing  wickedly  into  the  as 
tonished  young  face  before  him  as  he  cried  vi 
ciously:  "And  what's  your  defence?"  He  re 
peated  his  question,  and  yelped:  "Legs  —  legs 
is  your  defence  —  run  —  run  — " 

A  flush  covered  Dick  Hale's  face  as  he  opened 
his  mouth  and  burst  forth:  "  Mr.  Kilworth  — 
are  you  crazy!  " 

"  Run  —  run  —  run  I  I  say.  Get  to  South 
Africa,  and  they  can't  bring  you  back  from 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"        191 

there !  "  He  was  talking  fast  and  looking  at  the 
scratches  on  his  right  hand  as  he  spoke,  but  he 
looked  up  furtively  and  asked:  "  Ain't  that  fair? 
Ain't  I  treatin'  you  square  —  comin'  into  my  busi 
ness  and  wreckin'  me  and  it  too?  Ain't  I  givin' 
you  a  show?  You  take  that  Oklahoma  oil  stuff 
—  land  and  leases,  and  it'll  start  you  up  dowft 
there  and  make  a  man  of  you,  maybe  —  if  they 
ain't  too  much  damn  ornery  Hale  blood  in  you!  " 

In  the  silence  that  followed  the  old  man's  tirade 
Dick  Hale  stood  with  his  hands  deep  in  his 
pockets,  his  head  cocked  on  one  side,  squinting 
into  the  coarsened  plaster-striped  face  of  Boyce 
Kilworth.  After  a  moment  Hale  said:  "  As 
to  the  oil  leases  and  those  matters,  I  made  them 
over  to  the  bank  —  this  morning.  It  was  only 
fair;  the  money  you  lent  me  for  my  start  in  the 
matter  came  out  of  the  bank,  so  far  as  that  goes." 

Kilworth  lowered  at  Hale  and  sneered: 
'  Well,  I'm  glad  you  had  that  much  decency  about 
you."  He  paused  and  added:  "  Now,  what 
you  going  to  do  about  it?  Stay  here  and  bicker 
with  me  —  and  we  both  go  to  jail  —  or  git  out  and 
leave  me  so's  I  can  support  my  family  and  get  on 
my  feet  again?  " 


192  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

u  Putting  it  that  way,  Mr.  Kilworth  —  you  in 
terest  me,"  said  Hale.  "  At  least,  let's  talk  it 
over."  He  was  thinking  earnestly  as  he  looked 
at  the  floor,  and  was  speaking  in  a  preoccupied 
voice,  as  he  went  on:  "  Of  course,  if  I  go,  I  go  as 
a  forger  and  a  thief." 

"What's  that?"  cut  in  Kilworth,  listening. 

a  It's  this,  Father,"  cried  Deborah,  entering 
the  room.  "  If  Dick  goes  as  a  forger  and  a 
thief,  I  go  with  him  as  the  wife  of  a  forger  and 
a  thief!" 

The  old  man  opened  his  mouth,  partly  in  sur 
prise,  partly  in  rage,  and  showed  his  coarse,  glit 
tering,  golden  teeth,  before  he  hit  back: 

"What  — what?" 

"  Oh,  Debbie,  Debbie !  "  The  young  man  held 
out  his  arms,  and  she  came  into  them,  "  This  is 
worth  the  whole  day's  torment  —  Oh,  this  — 
this—"  He  felt  the  pressure  of  her  hands  in 
his  and  the  pressure  of  her  body  against  him  strong 
and  unshaken.  The  two  with  glistening  eyes 
faced  the  father  in  silence.  He  rose,  started 
around  the  table  toward  his  daughter,  but  stopped, 
putting  his  hand  to  his  head  as  though  a  blow 
there  had  checked  him,  but  he  shouted  after  a 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE"        193 

second's  halt  and  pause:  "  You  wouldn't  follow 
off  a  forger,  would  you  —  a  little  —  little  — whif 
fet,  who'd  ruined  your  father  —  not  a  thief, 
would  you,  girl?  " 

"  Even  a  thief,  Father,  if  it  comes  to  that.  But 
I  know  the  truth  —  the  truth  —  the  truth !  "  She 
clasped  her  arms  closely  about  the  young  figure 
beside  her  and  hid  her  face  as  she  trembled  with 
joy. 

Boyce  Kilworth,  still  with  his  hand  to  his  tem 
ple,  stumbled  back  to  his  place  behind  the  table, 
moaning  in  rage  and  pain.  He  started  in  fear 
as  he  heard  a  shuffling  in  the  hall,  followed  by  the 
cry:  "Get  away  —  get  away  from  here,  I  tell 
you !  "  Then  he  recognised  the  familiar  voice  of 
Colonel  Longford.  "  I  tell  you  we're  going  to 
see  Boyce  — :  we've  got  business  with  him."  The 
girl  and  the  young  man  were  standing  far  apart 
when  the  Colonel  came  in  and  they  saw  behind  him 
Caleb  Hale.  The  Colonel  carried  a  handful  of 
Hale's  Delphiniums,  and  Caleb  Hale  brought 
in,  clumsily  tucked  under  his  arm,  a  thin,  broad 
sheet-iron  box,  earth-stained  and  rusted.  The  men 
smiled  abashed,  and  Colonel  Longford  spoke: 
"  Boyce  —  here's  a  man's  got  something  to  say  to 


i94  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

you.  I  brought  Miss  Deborah  some  flowers,  but 
Cale  here  has  brought  something  else." 

"  Well,  get  it  over  with  —  quick  —  I'm  tired !  " 
grunted  Kilworth. 

"  So  you're  tired,  are  you,  Boyce  Kilworth,"  be 
gan  Caleb  Hale,  his  wrinkled,  gnarled  face  twist 
ing  nervously  as  he  spoke.  "Tired  —  eh? 
Well,  I  surmised  life  wasn't  exactly  exhilarating 
for  you  these  days.  So  I  just  dropped  over  with 
a  little  something  to  chirp  you  up  —  as  it  were !  " 

He  looked  down  deprecatingly  at  his  flat  tin 
box,  and  Kilworth,  following  Hale's  eyes,  re 
torted:  "  I  don't  want  none  of  your  damn  char 
ity!" 

«  Fie  —  fie !  "  joked  Caleb.  "  Also  tut,  tut  — 
what's  this  naughty  word  from  the  holy  man  of 
Uz  ?  Anyway  —  it's  not  for  you  —  so  don't 
trouble  yourself  about  the  charity  —  though,"  he 
added  grimly,  "  you've  got  to  take  it."  He 
looked  —  sniffed,  perhaps,  is  a  better  word  —  into 
the  patched  face  from  which  Kilworth's  insane  eyes 
glared  forth.  Then  into  Caleb  Hale's  scarred, 
battered  countenance  shone  a  clear  glow  of  dig 
nity  out  of  an  exalted  soul.  "  It's  not  much  I 
am  bringing,"  he  began  quietly,  but  in  his  voice 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "        195 

as  in  his  face  there  was  a  dominance  of  spirit  that 
set  him  apart  from  the  group  around  him,  as  he 
went  on :  "  It  is  nothing  but  —  money  —  just 
government  bonds  —  some  poor  government 
bonds  —  two  hundred  and  seventy-thousand  dol 
lars'  worth,  to  be  exact;  so  it's  merely  money  after 
all."  His  steady  eyes  met  those  of  Boyce  Kil- 
worth  that  glared  like  the  eyes  of  a  hungry  wolf. 
Hale  looked  sadly  into  the  ferocious  eyes  and 
smiled  kindly  as  he  went  on:  "I  say  it's  not 
much  —  just  some  money  —  or  what  is  the  same. 
But  it's  not  for  you;  not  even  for  those  you've 
robbed  —  directly  and  primarily.  I  guess  I  stole 
this  money  —  some  way.  At  least  I  didn't  earn 
it  by  the  sweat  of  my  brow  or  my  brain ;  I  got  it 
gambling  —  on  a  mine !  And  I've  had  it  — 
buried  in  my  garden  —  all  these  twenty  years  — " 
he  smiled  about  the  room,  and  went  on,  "  but  I've 
been  afraid  to  use  it."  His  voice  hardened  and 
deepened  and  the  muscles  of  his  face  tightened  as 
he  spoke.  "  I  knew  if  I  ever  began  with  it  I 
was  gone.  I'd  gamble  with  it  —  gamble  in  wheat 
—  or  stocks  —  or  something,  and  so,  like  the 
coward  I've  been,  I've  tried  my  soul  every  day 
by  going  and  prodding  all  that  money  buried 


196  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

under  my  Delphinium  bed,  and  then,  knowing  that 
I  was  strong  enough  to  resist  the  temptation,  I've 
said  a  little  child's  prayer  of  thanks,  and  I've 
gone  on  doing  my  real  work  in  the  world."  He 
looked  at  the  blue  flowers  and  his  wrinkled  old 
face  beamed  with  pride. 

"  So  here  it  is,  Boyce  Kilworth,  and  it's  not  for 
you  —  not  even  for  the  folks  you've  robbed,  and 
least  of  all  for  this  boy  of  mine  —  Oh,  I  would 
sooner  think  of  feeding  him  poison  than  think  of 
giving  him  this  money  —  now!  Not  until  he's 
old  enough  to  know  what  it  means.  It's  all  here 
—  two  hundred  and  seventy  thousand  dollars' 
worth  of  government  bonds  —  with  not  a  coupon 
clipped  in  all  these  twenty  odd  years."  He  put  it 
on  the  table,  and  Boyce  Kilworth's  hands  went  out 
like  fangs  to  the  box.  "  No,  Boyce  Kilworth  — 
not  yours  —  not  Dick's  —  not  your  depositors !  " 
Hale  kept  his  hand  on  the  box  and  looked  bashfully 
at  Colonel  Longford,  and  went  on:  "I  don't 
know,  Colonel,  as  I  can  rightly  tell  these  people 
how  it  is  —  I  wasn't  exactly  expecting  to  see  Dick 
and  Miss  Kilworth  here,"  he  stopped,  "  so  I  hesi 
tate,  rather,  to  say  what  I  had  to  say  before." 

"  Don't  mind  me,  Mr.  Hale,"  interrupted  the 


"  THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "        197 

girl,  "  I  know  the  worst  —  the  very  worst  — 
worse  than  you  —  about  things  as  they  are  here !  " 

But  Caleb  Hale  paused,  and  Colonel  Longford, 
dropping  his  cane,  straightened  up  to  say: 
"Well,  now  then  —  I  can  talk  and  talk  plain, 
Boyce.  Cale  and  I  have  been  talking  this  thing 
over.  We  know  you.  We  know  you  are  a  cant 
ing,  psalm-singing,  hypocritical  scoundrel  —  beg 
ging  Debbie's  pardon,  for  the  plain  words. 
You've  always  been  that.  But  youVe  some  way 
got  thousands  of  people  to  pin  their  faith  in  you. 
We  don't  care  how  much  money  you  take  from 
them.  But,  by  robbing  them,  you  reveal  yourself 
as  a  sham ;  you  rob  them  not  only  of  money  — 
which  is  not  important,  but  you  rob  thousands,  and 
really  hundreds  of  thousands  of  people  of  their 
faith  —  faith  in  a  lot  of  things,  Boyce,  beside 
yourself — faith  in  God  is  one  of  them.  Faith 
is  scarce  enough  on  this  planet,  and  Cale,  here, 
thinks,  and  I  agree  with  him,  that  though  it  is  a 
sneaking,  lying,  dastardly  thing  to  brace  you  up 
when  you  ought  to  be  roasting  in  the  hell  your 
hands  have  made  —  still  —  faith  is  faith,  and  it's 
more  than  all  the  money  in  the  world." 

Boyce  Kilworth's   face  showed  that  he  could 


198  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

not  follow  the  Colonel's  words.  "  Oh,  you'll  not 
understand  it,  Boyce  —  God  knows  your  poor 
mind  is  a  blank  along  these  lines.  But  Cale  and  I 

—  we  feel  deeply  that  this  money  here,  if  ever  it 
is  to  have  a  consecrated  use  —  now  is  the  time." 

A  flash  of  intelligent  joy  lightened  Kilworth's 
face.  Down  in  his  heart  a  pump  shook  with  a 
deep  throb  of  hope.  He  looked  a  dog-like  grati 
tude,  yet  uncertain,  and  Colonel  Longford  cried: 

"  Take  it  —  take  the  miserable  stuff  —  and  lie 

—  lie  for  the  glory  of  God,  and  tell  'em  it's  yours  ; 
that  you've  always  had  it,  and  that  you  can  pay 
up  dollar  for  dollar  as  you  said  you  would  1     Take 
it  —  not    for    you  —  not    for    your    depositors, 
though  it's  got  to  go  that  way ;  but  take  it  for  the 
sake  of  a  miserable  sinner  who  had  God's  mercy 
once  and  wants  to  make  this  small  return  in  sus 
taining  the  faith  of  his  fellows.     Take  it,  you 
damned   old   scoundrel !  "     He   shoved   the   box 
across  the  desk,  and  turned  to  Caleb  Hale  who 
stood  watching  greed  and  self-respect  —  curious 
companions  —  as  they  were  being  reborn  on  Boyce 
Kilworth's  face.     Kilworth  reached  for  the  box, 
opened  it,  looked  at  a  bond,  held  it  to  the  light, 


"THE  ONE  A  PHARISEE  "        199 

counted  the  undipped  coupons,  thumbed  down  into 
the  box,  and  spoke  no  word.  But  the  pump  in  his 
heart  was  jumping  like  a  machine  with  a  shattered 
governor.  The  ashen  face  flushed,  and  his  mouth 
watered,  and  he  all  but  drooled,  while  the  eyes  of 
those  about  him  saw  another  self  coming  out  of 
the  depths  into  the  ghastly  visage. 

The  Colonel  beckoned  Caleb  Hale,  and  the 
two  old  men  withdrew;  the  lovers,  with  linked 
hands,  followed  softly.  The  man  at  the  desk  was 
not  aware  that  he  was  alone.  He  was  breathing 
deeply  and  hard.  The  Colonel  and  Hale  quietly 
closed  the  outer  door  and  left  the  house.  In  the 
hall,  where  the  lovers  had  stopped  for  their  first 
fleeting,  shy  kiss,  they  heard  a  voice  —  the  old 
raucous  voice  of  Boyce  Kilworth,  crying:  "  This 
ends  — "  he  seemed  to  stop,  then  he  went  on, 
"  those  criminal  charges." 

They  thought  they  heard  him  cry  sharply  in  a 
choked  voice :  "  Oh,  my  God,  my  merciful  God," 
and  their  hands  tightened;  for  they  felt  Boyce  Kil 
worth  was  praying.  So  they  sat  in  the  deep,  sweet 
joy  of  love's  first  deep  silence. 

Then,  hearing  no  sound  from  within  the  room 


200  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

beyond,  they  rose  and  went  in.  And  there  they 
found  that  Boyce  Kilworth's  words  were  not  a 
prayer.  He  was  only  answering  a  bailiff  who 
haled  him  to  a  High  Court. 


"  A  PROSPEROUS  GENTLEMAN  r 

The  Thane  of  Cawdor  lives,  a  prosperous  gentleman. 

—  Macbeth. 

PART  I 

WHEN  our  grandfathers  —  heaven  rest  them ! 
— "  crossed  the  prairies  as  of  old  our  fathers 
crossed  the  sea,"  they  brought  their  womankind 
with  them,  after  the  manner  of  the  Teuton.  The 
women  brought  their  flower  seeds;  and  where 
those  seeds  were  planted  civilisation  came  to  stay. 
Not  the  schoolhouse,  or  the  court  house,  or  the 
saloon,  or  the  statesman,  or  the  real-estate  agent 
proclaimed  the  permanency  of  this  state-building 
Northern  white  man  so  indelibly  as  the  beds  of 
humble  petunias  and  zinnias  and  larkspurs. 

When  these  flowers  blossomed  in  the  desert, 
heralding  the  swift  coming  of  the  old-fashioned 
roses,  there,  indeed,  was  raised  the  everlasting 
Ebenezer  of  the  race.  There  was  consecrated 
ground.  Over  these  Western  plains  of  ours  the 
Cross  had  come,  and  had  crumbled  and  was  for- 


201 


202  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

gotten.  Grass  had  grown  over  the  adobe  walls  of 
deserted  churches  and  nameless  forts  where  the 
sword  of  conquest  lay  rusting  until  the  plough  un 
covered  a  degraded  splendour. 

The  Cross  and  the  sword  came  with  pomp  and 
pride;  and  the  outcast  Indian  woman  smiled  bit 
terly,  but  took  them,  and  her  half-breed  children 
lost  the  Cross  and  the  sword  in  the  wilderness, 
while  a  just  God  righted  her  wrongs  —  for  it  is  a 
law  of  progress  that  a  wronged  woman's  tears 
shall  salt  the  ground  where  they  are  shed.  So 
it  was  not  until  the  petunias  came,  and  the  four- 
o'clocks  and  asters  —  it  was  not  until  the  great 
hollyhocks  and  poppies  glowed  about  the  feet  of  a 
happy,  free-born  womanhood  that  God  let  the  land 
prosper  and  made  the  flower  garden  the  sign  of 
His  covenant  with  men. 

A  long  time  ago  —  in  the  beginning,  two  gen 
erations  ago,  in  fact  —  in  those  days  when  the 
grandmothers  of  New  Raynham  were  young  and 
presumably  beautiful,  even  that  first  summer  of 
the  town's  history,  when  the  settlement  was 
picketed  against  the  Indians  and  mothers  huddled 
with  their  young  in  the  little  stone  schoolhouse 
many  an  anxious  night,  while  the  men  rode  the 


"  A  PROSPEROUS  GENTLEMAN  "     203 

hills  and  stood  guard  at  the  fords  —  even  then, 
about  the  unpainted,  yellow-pine,  one-roomed 
houses  on  the  prairie  there  were  flowers.  And 
even  then  Mercy  Hayden's  flower  bed  was  the 
prettiest  in  the  village. 

A  woman  of  parts  was  Mercy  Hayden  —  a 
handsome  woman  she  was,  with  clear  brown  eyes ; 
and  many  tubs-ful  of  water  she  drew  from  the 
well  by  the  kitchen  door  to  pour  on  her  flowers. 
Israel,  her  husband,  was  a  busy  little  man,  and  on 
him  rested  great  affairs.  He  was  perennial  chair 
man  of  the  committee  to  do  something  that  was 
never  done.  He  was  forever  bustling  round  try 
ing  to  get  the  committee  together  to  act.  So 
when  the  drought  of  'sixty  came,  Israel,  as  chair 
man  of  the  committee  on  aid,  was  sent  East  to  tell 
the  people  of  the  famine,  while  at  home  the  wind 
lass  creaked  day  and  night  at  the  Hayden  well  — 
the  only  well  in  all  the  valley  that  never  ran  dry. 

Mercy  Hayden,  in  man's  boots  and  a  faded 
blue  jeans  dress,  bent  her  body  to  the  wheel  and 
sent  scores  of  women  home  laden  with  water. 
She  did  not  let  her  flowers  wilt;  and  the  next 
spring,  when  the  rain  came  and  Israel  came  bus 
tling  home  with  it,  he  found  a  small  white-and- 


204  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

pink  blossom  blooming  in  a  home-made  walnut 
cradle ;  for  Constance  Hayden  had  come  to  Pleas 
ant  Ridge  to  grow  up  with  the  flowers. 

In  the  wondrous  seasonal  procession  of  the 
flowers  one  may  trace  an  analogy  between  their 
passing  show  and  the  life  of  man.  Of  course 
such  analogies  are  more  or  less  imaginative,  but 
the  first  flowers  of  spring  seem  to  bear  more  than 
a  fanciful  resemblance  to  the  sweet  innocence  of 
childhood.  As  the  year  opens  to  its  promise, 
what  is  the  rose  but  love?  What  is  the  peony  but 
joy?  And  the  poppy  —  the  scarlet,  shameless 
poppy  —  if  there  had  been  no  word  in  the  world 
for  the  memory  of  a  kiss,  the  poppy  would  have 
saved  the  thrill  for  us. 

Across  the  unfenced  fields  among  the  spring 
flowers,  innocent  and  beautiful  —  the  dogtooth 
violets,  the  wild  lupines,  the  anemones  and  prim 
roses  —  the  brown,  unshod  feet  of  the  little  girl 
wandered.  And  Elias  Higginson,  following  the 
town  herd  from  hill  to  ford,  used  to  think  of  the 
child  in  his  slow  boyish  fancy  as  a  gay  moving 
flower,  fluttering  over  the  wide  green  stretches  of 
the  unploughed  fields.  But,  though  the  little  girl 
played  joyously  among  the  wild  flowers  of  the 


"  A  PROSPEROUS  GENTLEMAN  "     205 

prairie,  she  knew  and  took  to  her  heart  the  homely 
garden  flowers  in  the  kitchen  yard.  And  as  she 
moved  through  the  town  with  her  schoolbooks  un 
der  her  arm  —  first  her  little  primer,  then  her  big 
geography,  and  finally  her  fat  geometry  —  the 
eyes  of  Elias  Higginson  continued  to  follow  her 
slight  figure. 

The  town  saw  her  among  the  other  children 
and  said:  "  Her  mother's  face  and  her  father's 
ways!"  And  the  town  smiled  and  loved  her, 
for  the  town  understood  her  father's  ways.  In 
a  decade  or  so  every  man  in  a  new  community, 
or  every  new  man  in  an  old  community,  is 
shaken  down  to  his  level.  And  Israel  Hayden 
found  his  place  naturally.  The  town  understood 
how  Israel's  "  old  army  trouble  "  had  forced  him 
from  the  confinement  of  his  real-estate  and  insur 
ance  office  into  a  grocery  store,  where  he  clerked 
and  drove  the  delivery  wagon ;  and  then  the  town 
accepted  without  question  his  explanation  that  it 
was  only  to  oblige  a  dying  comrade  that  he  bought 
the  comrade's  dray  and  plied  it,  doing  odd  jobs 
that  required  no  heavy  lifting. 

So  her  father's  ways,  in  the  mouth  of  the  town, 
even  though  her  father's  ways  were  not  ascendant, 


206  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

carried  no  opprobrium  with  them.  They  were 
gentle  ways  and  kindly,  and  the  town  saw  the 
flower  that  Mercy  Hayden  always  kept  in  Israel's 
coat  lapel;  and  the  town  understood  the  situation 
and  was  kind. 

Not  even  the  proud  Herringtons  jeered  at 
Israel  Hayden's  declining  station;  and  Charley 
Herrington,  whose  youth  was  spent  in  a  military 
school,  and  who  was  a  sort  of  town  prince  of  the 
blood,  sometimes  rode  homeward  on  Israel's  dray 
to  display  an  ostentatious  democracy. 

The  years  went  by;  until  one  year  came  when 
Constance  Hayden  came  to  know  the  roses  and 
what  they  meant;  but  they  were  not  Ellas  Higgin- 
son's  roses.  From  his  farm  cabin,  into  which  he 
had  built  his  heart's  secret,  he  saw  the  little  girl 
of  his  day-dreams  move  on  into  another  sphere. 
When  she  was  sixteen  Constance  finished  in  the 
town  high  school.  Her  mother,  foreseeing  the 
day  when  Israel's  army  trouble  might  make  even 
light  work  impossible,  cast  about  her  for  some 
thing  the  girl  could  do.  So  one  fine  summer 
day  found  Constance  Hayden,  a  small  young 
woman,  sitting  in  a  large  chair  before  a  huge 
ledger,  keeping  books  in  the  Herrington  office. 


"  A  PROSPEROUS  GENTLEMAN  "     207 

Keeping  books  at  that  time  and  in  that  place 
was  a  genteel  employment.  Women  had  not 
found  themselves  outside  the  home;  and  Con 
stance,  in  the  grand  office  of  the  magnificent  Her- 
ringtons,  did  not  realise  how  lightly  she  was  es 
teemed.  She  felt  that  the  weight  of  the  universe 
was  on  her,  without  knowing  that  she  was  really 
only  half  servant  arid  half  toy;  but  when  she  came 
to  know  the  roses,  and  they  were  Charley  Her- 
rington's  roses,  the  light  of  the  aforesaid  universe 
seemed  to  beam  on  her.  She  kept  the  roses  on 
her  desk  behind  the  huge  ledger;  and  often  at 
noontime,  when  the  office  was  all  but  deserted, 
Charley  Herrington  would  slip  behind  the  ledger 
with  her,  and  they  would  play  that  it  was  a  secret 
bower.  When  the  youth  left,  the  maiden  breathed 
the  roses  deeply,  and  they  brought  into  the  secret 
bower  a  thousand  joys;  for,  after  all,  it  is  the 
fond  recollections  of  youth  rather  than  of  age 
that  are  sweetest. 

When  days  and  weeks  and  months  form  the 
vista  through  which  we  look  into  a  gently  receding 
past,  instead  of  through  years  and  decades,  we 
recollect  more  vividly  and  the  pleasures  of  mem 
ory  are  keener.  So  when  Constance  Hayden 


208  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

looked  from  the  threshold  of  her  twenties  into  the 
remote  period  of  her  late  teens,  and  recalled  ten 
derly  delights  that  she  had  breathed  in,  with  other 
roses  in  other  years  (to  be  exact,  the  year  before) 
she  seemed  to  herself  exceedingly  old  and  wise. 
And  the  angels,  knowing  how  young  she  was  in 
truth,  how  new  to  all  sin  and  sorrow  and  suffering 
was  her  girlish  heart  —  the  angels  must  have  sad 
dened,  as  much  as  angels  ever  can  sadden  when 
they  see  how  blindly  we  walk  through  this  world. 

It  was  a  clandestine  affair  —  the  love  affair  be 
tween  Charley  Herrington  and  Constance  Hay- 
den,  the  drayman's  daughter  in  the  Herrington 
office;  for  she  was  just  that  in  Charley  Herring- 
ton's  heart  —  the  drayman's  daughter  in  his 
father's  office.  And  he  was,  in  his  own  view  of  it, 
a  young  person  divinely  anointed  by  the  unction 
of  a  prospective  inheritance,  one  of  the  rulers  — 
one  of  the  chosen  few. 

They  say  that  our  lives  are  formed,  our  careers 
marked,  our  choice  of  destinies  made,  when  we 
are  twenty-five;  that  after  that  nothing  comes  into 
the  mind  which  was  not  planted  there  before  the 
closing  days  of  our  youth.  That  fact  is  one  of 
the  crudest  facts  of  life;  for  inheritance  and  en- 


"  A  PROSPEROUS  GENTLEMAN  "     209 

vironment  had  planted  in  Charley  Herrington's 
heart  a  sad  and  miserable  bed  of  poisons.  The 
age  had  planted  its  shams ;  its  false  valuations ;  its 
meaningless  architecture,  its  fortunes  founded  on 
fraud;  its  lies  and  cheats  in  religion,  and  its  mawk 
ish  sentiment  in  art. 

The  home  had  told  Charley  Herrington  that 
money  makes  right;  that  money  brings  happiness; 
that  money  marks  the  distinctions  among  men, 
and  that  those  who  have  no  money  have  no  rights. 
''  To  them  who  have  money,  shall  be  given  money; 
and  from  them  who  have  no  money,  shall  be 
taken  away  even  that  which  they  have/'  was  the 
family  interpretation  of  Christ's  great  spiritual 
truth.  So,  in  choosing  his  destiny,  Charley  Her 
rington  had  chosen  with  blind  eyes. 

Partly  he  was  to  blame  for  his  blindness,  for 
the  truth  is  always  near  us;  but  much  of  the  blame 
for  his  sordid  choice  in  life's  great  decision  be 
tween  the  ways  of  life  was  due  to  the  age  and  its 
environing  shams  —  for  it  was  a  material  age 
and  in  it  youth  had  few  visions. 

Yet  youth  is  ever  youth;  it  must  express  itself 
in  whatever  age  life  makes.  So  the  gay  young 
man  slipped  through  the  sunflowers  and  the  high 


210  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

weeds  that  bordered  the  town  into  the  unpainted 
home  of  the  Haydens.  The  parents  welcomed 
him  as  a  young  prince.  They  did  not  compre 
hend  that  he  was  merely  a  light  young  person, 
flirting  out  of  his  class.  He  played  among  the 
flowers,  a  gay  girl-eating  butterfly.  And  when 
the  roses  came  in  May  there  was  no  man  or  God 
or  angel  to  spoil  his  joy  in  them  —  only  this  that 
might  have  intervened:  Elias  Higginson  — 
silent,  ignored,  forgotten  —  hovered  ever  about 
the  Hayden  home,  corroding  his  heart  with  jeal 
ousy;  a  shamed  but  fascinated  spy  on  the  lovers. 

Then  one  night  —  one  glorious  summer  night 
—  when  the  pale  harvest  moon  was  lighting  a 
gray  sky,  the  youth  and  the  maiden  sat  alone 
among  the  fading  larkspurs.  The  dahlias  were 
at  their  full  and  the  summer  was  past  its  climax. 
That  night  Constance  Hayden  faced  her  tragedy. 
It  is  such  an  old,  old  tragedy,  recorded  a  million, 
million  times  since  life  began  and  love  came 
into  the  heart  of  youth.  The  heart-break  and 
anguish  of  this  particular  kind  of  tragedy  is  that 
it  comes  when  life  is  young  —  all  unprepared  by 
philosophy  and  experience  to  meet  the  trial. 

Every  period  of  life  has  its  distinctive  heart- 


"  A  PROSPEROUS  GENTLEMAN  "     211 

break.  Death,  that  makes  the  tragedy  of  ma 
turity,  does  not  crush  youth,  and  perfidy  does  not 
beat  down  men  and  women  in  their  forties.  But 
when  this  girl,  in  the  gray  night,  saw  lies  faltering 
on  the  lips  she  had  trusted;  when  she  saw  vanity 
and  deceit  in  the  man  she  adored;  when  she  knew 
that  love  could  not  bind  him  to  honour  —  there 
came  to  her,  greater  than  love,  more  powerful 
than  self-respect,  a  big,  chattering  fear,  which 
rises  in  us  when  we  have  lost  everything.  She 
fell  on  her  knees  at  his  feet  and  begged  in  quick 
whispers.  She  tore  at  his  clothing  in  a  frenzy  of 
terror. 

"  No !  "  he  said,  as  he  tried  to  turn  a*way.  "  I 
tell  you  I've  bought  my  ticket  and  I've  got  to  go 
on  the  early  morning  train." 

"But,  God  — why,  God—  Dear  God,  let 
me  pray!  "  she  panted,  clutching  his  legs  as  he 
turned  away.  "  Oh,  dear  God,  don't  do  this  to 
me !  What  have  I  done  ?  Oh,  Charley  —  Char 
ley —  Dear  God!  Can't  you  make  him  see 
what  —  how  mother  —  and  oh,  Charley  —  there's 
father  —  dear — " 

He  broke  from  her  and  stepped  beyond  her 
reach.  He  lacked  courage  to  run,  but  stood 


212  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

beside  the  faded  larkspur  bed,  where  she  was 
groping  on  her  knees. 

"  Ah,  brace  up,  Connie  I  Don't  be  a  fool ! 
You're  just  as  much  to  blame  — "  He  looked  at 
her  trying  to  rise  and  went  on:  "  And,  anyway, 
Con,  I  keep  telling  you  — " 

She  stumbled  to  her  feet  and  in  her  hand  she 
held  a  wisp  of  flower  stalks.  She  was  trembling 
and  sobbing. 

"  The  larkspur's  all  faded  —  all  withered  and 
faded !  "  she  repeated,  holding  it  out  toward  him 
beseechingly.  "The  larkspur's  all  faded  —  like 
me."  She  caught  her  breath  as  she  cried:  "  All 
faded  —  like  me !" 

He  ran  through  the  garden  and  down  the  weedy 
road;  and  when  he  came  to  the  board  sidewalk 
that  led  him  to  the  thick  of  the  little  town,  with 
its  sham  architecture  and  its  false  pretences,  he 
shuddered  as  he  walked;  for  he,  too,  was  young 
and  could  not  face  what  he  had  done  without 
wincing. 

The  week  after  he  came  home  in  the  late  au 
tumn  Constance  Hayden  died.  Her  death  might 
have  been  suicide  or  it  might  have  been  murder; 
but  in  either  case  the  town  saw  her  a  victim  — 


"A  PROSPEROUS  GENTLEMAN  "     213 

little  and  poor  and  young,  and  essentially  innocent. 
And  at  the  black  wrong  of  her  death  the  town 
boiled  with  sudden  fury.  In  her  lover's  trunk,  an 
hour  after  her  death,  the  officer  who  came  to  arrest 
Charley  Herrington  found  her  letters,  her  pitiful, 
pleading  letters.  These  letters  were  read  in  court. 

The  dead  girl's  mother  did  not  come  to  the 
courtroom  —  she  could  not  face  the  shame  of  it; 
but  Israel  Hayden  came,  a  little,  ineffective,  old 
ish  man,  in  his  frayed,  brushed,  old-fashioned  Sun 
day  best,  with  a  foolish  flower  on  his  coat  lapel. 
He  looked  with  weak,  watery  blue  eyes  at  the 
jury,  at  the  reporters,  at  the  judge  on  the  bench, 
and  at  the  prisoner,  who  sat,  as  the  papers  de 
clared,  "  nonchalantly  through  it  all  " ;  and  Char 
ley  changed  colour  only  when  a  bunch  of  faded 
larkspurs  fell  from  the  first  letter  read  by  the 
prosecuting  attorney.  He  shuddered  for  a  sec 
ond  and  played  nervously  with  his  blond  mous 
tache;  but  in  a  few  minutes  was  smiling  at  his 
arrogant  father,  who  sat  beside  the  prisoner  rather 
grandly,  like  a  tin  god  in  iron-grey  whiskers. 

By  one  of  those  subterranean  manoeuvres  com 
mon  in  country  politics,  Elias  Higginson  had 
worked  himself  on  the  jury  list  and  had  sworn 


2i4  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

himself  into  the  jury  box.  He  sat,  grim-faced 
and  terrible,  glowering  at  the  handsome  young  de 
fendant  from  the  minute  the  jury  was  accepted;  but 
his  hatred  was  impotent.  The  dead  girl's  letters 
constituted  the  only  evidence  against  the  young 
man  and  the  jury  disagreed.  When  a  new  prose 
cuting  attorney  was  elected  he  continued  the  case 
term  after  term  until  the  judge  struck  it  from  the 
docket.  And  so  the  tragedy  of  Constance  Hay- 
den  passed  and  the  world  rolled  on. 

PART  II 

In  a  decade  the  comrades  of  the  Grand  Army 
laid  Israel  away  in  a  bower  of  homely  flowers, 
with  a  posy  on  his  breast.  Mercy,  his  widow, 
sold  the  home;  and  when  she  left  the  town  for 
New  England  the  flower  garden  faded  and  would 
have  disappeared  had  not  another  woman,  with 
joy  in  her  heart,  rented  the  Hayden  place  the  next 
spring.  Another  family  grew  up  among  the  flow 
ers,  and  life,  with  its  wonderful  panorama, 
wrought  its  changes,  while  the  changeless  flowers 
looked  on.  The  town  grew  big  and  black  with 
coal  smoke,  and  strong  and  ruthless  with  capital. 

When   Charley   Herrington  walked   from   the 


"A  PROSPEROUS  GENTLEMAN"     215 

courtroom  under  a  nominal  bond  after  the  mis-trial 
of  the  case  against  him,  people  shook  their  heads 
and  said:  "  He'll  never  get  over  it;  he  can't  live 
this  down!"  But  he  walked  to  a  cigar  stand 
near  the  courthouse,  filled  his  pockets  with  ten- 
cent  cigars  —  not  for  tribute  or  defence,  but  for 
his  own  solace  —  and  took  up  life  with  apparent 
good  cheer.  The  cheer  on  his  face  was  only  ap 
parent,  however,  for  his  soul  had  been  scalded 
with  the  fury  of  public  opinion,  and  that  soul 
winced  and  trembled  behind  his  lonely  cigar  every 
hour  of  the  day. 

It  seemed  to  the  young  man  that  he  met  at  least 
one  of  those  jurymen  whenever  he  walked  on  the 
street;  and  people  who  had  sat  in  the  courtroom, 
leaning  forward,  gaping  and  red-faced,  to  hear 
those  letters  read,  filed  by  the  young  man  in  a 
never-ending  procession  for  years  and  years. 
During  the  trial  the  wrath  of  a  score  of  fathers 
had  translated  itself  into  talk  of  lynching,  which 
came  to  the  proud  Herrington  family;  and  these 
fathers  were  forever  crowding  into  cars  with  Her 
rington,  sitting  in  public  places  beside  him,  and 
confronting  him  in  stores  and  offices  as  he  went 
about  his  business. 


2i6  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

The  long  list  of  citizens  who  had  hired  an  attor 
ney  to  assist  the  county  prosecutor  was  seared  on 
the  young  man's  mind;  and  each  name  remained 
an  object  of  hatred  with  him.  Yet  he  faced  the 
town  —  though,  for  the  most  part,  alone  —  with 
a  smile  so  firm  that  men  called  it  the  Herrington- 
grin  years  after  they  had  forgotten  why  he  turned 
the  corners  of  his  mouth  up  instead  of  down. 

He  went  into  his  father's  bank  and  worked 
steadily;  and  men  said:  "  Well,  Charley's  getting 
down  to  business !  "  He  drove  a  good  horse  — 
but  not  too  good  —  and  he  always  drove  alone ; 
and  he  drove  many  a  mile  out  of  his  way  to  avoid 
seeing  Mercy  Hayden's  flower  garden.  He  had 
strange  things  to  drink  in  his  locker  at  the  club, 
but  did  not  drink  much  of  them  and  always  drank 
alone. 

He  bought  doubtful  assets  of  the  bank  at  liberal 
discounts,  forced  the  assets  to  collection;  and  the 
directors  nodded  wise  heads  and  called  Charley 
a  chip  off  the  old  block.  Then  the  old  block  went 
to  the  fire,  and  Charley  Herrington  supported  two 
horses,  rather  fast  steppers  for  a  country  town; 
and  they  would  not  go  past  Mercy  Hayden's  old- 
fashioned  garden,  either. 


"  A  PROSPEROUS  GENTLEMAN  "     217 

Charley  got  under  the  ancestral  plug  hat  and 
went  on  mysterious  trips  to  the  West  and  South, 
where  he  was  known  as  an  Eastern  capitalist  — 
for  you  must  understand  that  in  New  Mexico  and 
Arizona,  the  Missouri  Valley  is  called  the  East. 

And  as  an  Eastern  capitalist  Charley  Herring- 
ton  brought  home  to  the  First  National  Bank  of 
New  Raynham  much  curious  paper.  In  his  bag 
were  irrigation  bonds  of  various  projects  where 
it  was  twenty  miles  to  water  —  up,  down  or  side 
ways;  municipal  bonds  of  towns  where  they 
counted  prairie  dogs  to  make  up  a  legal  popula 
tion;  mining  stock  that  covered  gopher  holes;  and 
mortgages  on  land  where  the  coyote  and  the  cac 
tus  were  the  only  staple  crops. 

It  was  at  this  interesting  stage  of  his  journey 
through  the  vale  of  tears,  however,  that  Charley 
Herrington  quit  buying  the  bank's  doubtful  assets, 
and  made  such  changes  in  the  directorate  that  the 
bank  became  a  customer  for  his  securities.  Un 
der  his  high  hat,  with  his  grand  manner,  in  his 
rented  private  car,  when  Charles  Herrington  en 
tered  a  sage-brush  principality  he  went  as  a  satrap 
visiting  his  province,  and  men  came  running  out 
to  meet  him.  He  bought  lavishly  of  what  they 


2i8  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

had  to  sell,  but  he  insisted  on  all  commissions, 
promoter's  profits,  gratuities  and  perquisites  being 
made  over  to  him  before  he  would  talk  busi 
ness. 

He  squeezed  one  poor  Cripple  Creek  gold 
miner,  with  a  daughter  to  sell,  so  ruthlessly  that 
when  young  Charley  brought  home  his  new  wife 
they  said  in  the  bank  that  he  sweated  beads  of 
gold  ore,  like  roasted  quartz,  for  a  year  after  the 
wedding. 

Among  the  dummy  bank  directors  who  bought 
the  Herrington  assets  at  Charley's  bidding  the 
bride  was  known  as  the  incontrovertible  asset;  but 
the  bridegroom  kept  her  most  of  the  time  in  Eu 
rope  or  in  New  York,  where  her  father's  name 
was  well  known  in  financial  circles,  and  used  her 
as  a  sort  of  daily  New  York  balance.  In  the 
middle  of  the  nineties  Herrington  left  the  South 
west  as  a  hunting  ground,  partly  because  of  cer 
tain  wide  areas  where  he  could  not  go  without 
danger  of  arrest  or  of  summons  to  suits  for  dam 
ages. 

He  opened  an  office  —  a  rather  modest  office 
—  on  Lower  Broad  Street  in  New  York  as  a 
broker  in  Western  securities,  and  also  had  the 


"  A  PROSPEROUS  GENTLEMAN  "     219 

name  of  his  Missouri  Valley  Bank  printed  on  his 
office  door. 

In  New  Raynham  he  remained  Charley  Her- 
rington,  of  the  First  National;  and  because  there 
came  into  the  town  in  due  course,  but  on  rare  oc 
casions,  riding  a  Shetland  pony  with  much  pomp, 
a  grandson  of  the  Cripple  Creek  Bonanza  King, 
known  as  little  Charley  Herrington,  the  father, 
still  in  his  forties,  became  known  as  Old  Charley 
Herrington.  He  was  gray  before  he  was  fifty; 
his  face  took  on  a  granite  cast,  and  his  eyes  were 
sharp  and  keen  and  hard. 

He  was  a  liberal  giver  to  all  the  town  institu 
tions  that  begged  their  way:  the  churches,  the 
Y.  M.  C.  A.,  the  public  library,  the  band,  the 
Christmas  fund  of  the  lodges.  And  he  was  an 
affable,  amiable,  smiling,  half  lovable,  altogether 
lonely  sort  of  fellow,  who  kept  so  far  aloof  from 
the  town's  business  and  political  factions  as  to  have 
few  enemies.  Yet  he  estimated  everything  in 
terms  of  dollars.  It  was  worth  what  it  would 
bring,  or  if  not,  it  was  worth  the  money  invested  in 
it.  He  was  as  joyless  and  taciturn  about  his  money 
to  his  associates  in  business  as  he  was  about  every 
thing  else;  but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  everything  else 


220  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

of  his  life  covered  a  small  area.  He  had  quit 
reading  books  because  he  found  things  in  them 
that  irritated  the  scalded  spot  in  his  soul.  He 
had  scarcely  been  a  part  of  the  social  activities  of 
his  town  for  something  like  the  same  reason. 
Men  said  he  was  inordinately  modest  and  self- 
effacing;  but  he  feared  fame  too  —  just  as  he 
feared  to  go  to  court  to  assert  his  rights  in  busi 
ness  deals. 

Time  and  again  he  was  about  to  make  a  boast 
of  the  fact  that  he  had  never  had  a  lawsuit,  but 
he  always  saw  to  what  exception  the  boast  would 
lead  him  and  refrained  from  it.  At  home  in 
New  Raynham  he  took  no  leading  part  in  any 
thing,  for  fear  he  would  call  down  criticism  on 
himself;  and  away  from  home  he  avoided  news 
paper  notoriety,  and  always  met  former  citi 
zens  of  his  home  town  with  diffidence  and  obvious 
constraint.  The  scalded  spot  on  his  soul,  instead 
of  healing  and  growing  smaller,  began  to  eat;  and 
its  infection  began  to  sink  deeper  into  his  life. 

As  for  his  wife  and  the  transient  home  they 
kept,  she  and  the  home  did  not  help  matters  for 
Herrington.  The  wife  was  a  noisy,  extreme  sort 
of  person,  whose  figure  changed  with  the  modes, 


"  A  PROSPEROUS  GENTLEMAN  "     221 

and  who  loved  to  play  the  aristocrat  on  the  towns 
people,  whom  she  called  the  natives.  She  drew 
about  her  a  fast  and  rather  impossible  young  set, 
and  hooted  at  the  attempts  of  the  women  in  the 
town  who  tried  to  better  conditions  through  the 
City  Federation,  the  Library  Board  and  the  Civic 
Improvement  League. 

So  the  Herringtons  remained  an  alien  family  in 
their  home  town  —  a  social  anomaly.  Thus,  in 
his  middle  fifties,  when  thirty  years'  living  with 
the  gnawing  ulcer  on  his  soul  had  made  its  symp 
toms  a  part  of  his  life,  Charley  Herrington  was  a 
repressed,  colourless,  wiry,  white-haired,  flint- 
visaged  man,  with  suspicious,  furtive  eyes,  one  of 
which  -was  curtained  by  a  cynical  drooping  lid. 
He  gave  the  impression  of  one  living  with  under- 
spiritual  nourishment,  without  having  a  wicked 
face.  He  looked  morally  hungry.  His  reckless 
manner  fooled  no  one  into  thinking  him  brave. 
He  was  eager  without  enthusiasm,  and  often  re 
vealed  a  flashing,  greedy  desire  for  some  common 
place  of  human  companionship  that  disclosed  the 
lonesome,  unspent  life  he  had  lived.  The  soul  that 
shone  through  his  emotionless  face  was  not  the 
mildly  blanching  soul  of  one  leaving  youth  for  a 


222  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

higher  state,  but  the  charred  soul  of  a  quenched 
fire. 

It  was  in  those  days  of  his  middle  fifties  that 
he  bought  the  whole  block  of  ground,  once  far 
out  in  the  sunflowers,  a  part  of  which  was  the 
little  lot  where  the  Haydens  had  lived  —  though 
only  a  few  very  old  settlers  remembered  that  — 
and  on  the  block  he  put  up  the  great  Colonial 
mansion  that  is  the  town's  pride  to-day,  a  building 
more  awful  in  its  solemn  lines  than  the  courthouse, 
more  splendid  than  the  five-story  hotel,  more  gor 
geous  than  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  more  impressive  than 
even  the  ten-story  First  National  Bank  Build 
ing. 

This  Colonial  mansion,  set  among  great  trees 
that  came  to  the  town  from  afar  on  flat  cars  and 
made  the  town  gasp  for  weeks,  is  surrounded  by 
beautiful  gardens  and  by  flowers  the  very  names 
of  which  are  strange  to  the  population  of  New 
Raynham ;  but  the  thing  about  the  house  that  really 
paralysed  the  town,  rendering  it  speechless  and 
setting  it  in  its  low  place  in  the  universe  —  far  be 
low  the  exalted  Herringtons  —  was  not  the  house 
itself,  but  a  detail  of  its  construction.  To  begin 
with,  a  contractor  from  Chicago  did  the  work  — 


"A  PROSPEROUS  GENTLEMAN'1     223 

brought  his  workmen  from  Chicago,  and  the  town 
never  had  so  much  as  a  glimpse  of  the  plans. 

However,  that  was  not  what  reduced  the  town 
to  a  social  pulp.  The  town  was  pulverised  by  the 
fact  that  as  soon  as  the  Chicago  contractor  began 
his  work  he  put  up  a  great  board  wall  round  the 
entire  block,  with  signs  marked  Private  Grounds 
—  Keep  Out !  on  the  walls.  After  that  what 
could  the  town  do  on  Sunday  afternoons  and 
pleasant  evenings  when,  according  to  all  the  tra 
ditions  and  customs  of  New  Raynham  a  man  is  en 
titled  to  take  his  family  and  stroll  critically  through 
the  rising  home  of  his  neighbour  and  locate  the 
kitchen,  the  spare  bedroom,  the  bathroom  and  the 
hired-girl's  room,  as  a  free  fancy  may  dictate  ? 

So  the  town  circled  the  walls  of  the  rising  man 
sion  much  as  Joshua  circled  the  walls  of  Jericho, 
calling  down  mild  anathemas  on  it;  not  knowing 
that  within  the  pine-board  walls  the  prosperous 
gentleman  proprietor  had  built  wire  netting  around 
a  garden  spot  where  a  few  old-fashioned  flowers 
smiled  in  the  great  grounds  wherein  the  builders 
built. 

When  the  pine-board  walls  came  down  the 
house  was  finished  and  the  gardens  all  laid  out. 


224  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

So,  when  the  town  went  in  —  and  it  went  in  pell- 
mell  as  soon  as  the  iron  gates  swung  on  their 
hinges  between  the  high  stone  pillars  —  the  town 
did  not  know  that  the  old-fashioned  garden,  nes 
tling  in  the  formal  gardens,  so  beautifully  de 
signed,  was  Mercy  Hayden's  garden,  that  had 
lived  through  all  the  years.  But  Elias  Higgin- 
son,  grizzled  and  gnarled  by  time  and  toil,  rattling 
by  the  iron  palings  of  the  garden  on  his  farm 
wagon,  saw  over  the  formal  design  into  the  old- 
fashioned  heart  of  it,  suckled  his  hard-boned  hate 
and  said  to  himself:  "He's  afraid  of  it;  he 
dassent  trample  it  out !  " 

What  whim  or  fancy  or  fear  made  Herrington 
save  the  old  garden  one  may  not  say;  but  there  it 
grew,  much  as  it  had  grown  for  nearly  half  a  cen 
tury  —  iris  and  peonies,  lilacs  and  old-fashioned 
roses,  asters  and  larkspurs,  tall  hollyhocks  and 
zinnias,  four-o'clocks,  poppies,  petunias  and  chry 
santhemums  —  growing  gradually  less  gorgeous, 
less  fragrant,  less  deeply  appealing  to  the  senses 
of  men  as  the  flowering  season  waned  and  passed. 

Man  goes  through  his  life's  garden  in  some 
thing  like  such  a  procession;  and  all  the  exotics 
of  pleasure  bought  and  paid  for,  all  the  hothouse 


"  A  PROSPEROUS  GENTLEMAN  "     225 

flowers  of  luxury  and  artificial  beauty,  cannot 
bring  back  the  breath  of  his  May  roses  or  the 
joy  of  his  June  poppies. 

The  years  that  followed  the  building  of  the  new 
house  saw  the  climax  of  Herrington's  career.  He 
went  into  railroad  building  and  became  president 
of  the  little  New  Raynham  and  Gulf  Road.  His 
status  as  president  of  even  so  unimportant  a  road 
as  the  N.  R.  &  G.  was  such  that  New  Raynham 
felt  it  to  be  sacrilege  to  call  him  old  Charley ;  and 
he  became  Mr.  Herrington. 

Most  of  the  people  of  New  Raynham  in  the  be 
ginning  of  the  second  decade  of  the  new  century 
had  never  heard  the  story  of  Constance  Hayden  at 
all;  but  President  Herrington,  of  the  N.  R.  &  G., 
knew  that  story.  As  the  years  weighed  on  him, 
the  story  remained  in  rigid  detail,  crazily  out  of 
drawing  with  the  rest  of  his  life;  yet  the  white- 
haired,  hard-visaged,  cock-eyed  old  man,  living  in 
the  great  house  —  the  sharp-voiced,  querulous  old 
man,  who  softened  only  to  the  little  granddaugh 
ter  who  toddled  beside  him  under  the  great  elms 
in  the  gardens  —  went  to  work  every  morning  at 
seven  and  toiled  until  dark.  He  did  not  appear 
like  a  man  who  had  ever  been  touched  by  the  ten- 


226  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

der  passion.  "  Mr.  Herrington  is  Old  Business," 
quoth  the  town.  "  Watch  out  if  you  ever  catch 
him  napping;  he  will  wake  up  and  bite  a  hole  out 
of  you!" 

When  he  was  in  New  Raynham  Herrington's 
great  motor  car  swung  like  a  pendulum  between 
his  office  and  his  home.  Partly  because  he  had 
the  only  limousine  in  town  and  partly  because 
he  was  the  town's  capitalist,  he  was  a  marked  fig 
ure  as  he  sat  all  alone  stooped  over  on  the  back 
seat  of  the  car,  whirling  from  his  work  to  his 
meals  and  his  bed.  Romance  seemed  beyond  his 
universe.  At  sixty  he  was  as  tight-skinned  and 
dried-up  as  a  man  of  eighty;  but  he  was  as  vigor 
ous  and  hard  as  a  man  in  his  forties. 

There  went  with  him  in  those  days,  whether  he 
worked  at  home  or  travelled  in  state  over  his 
little  railroad,  a  smart,  trim,  shrewd,  silent  young 
woman,  in  her  thirties  —  Mrs.  Ogler,  his  secre 
tary  or  chief  clerk,  as  the  railroad  people  called 
her.  The  town  accounted  Mrs.  Ogler  a  wonder. 
A  myth  grew  up  round  her  —  as  to  the  things 
she  knew  and  as  to  the  things  she  could  do  and 
did.  It  was  said  that  Mrs.  Ogler  knew  every 
tie  on  every  railroad  Mr.  Herrington  had  built; 


UA  PROSPEROUS  GENTLEMAN1'     227 

that  she  drew  his  contracts  and  kept  all  his  many 
businesses  at  her  finger-ends.  No  half-servant, 
half-toy  status  had  Nellie  Ogler.  She  had  arrived 
in  the  day  and  generation  when  women  and  men 
worked  together  out  in  the  world  as  equals,  as 
partners  in  achievements  if  not  in  profits. 

Two  men  stenographers  worked  under  her,  one 
of  them  a  faithful,  scrubby-looking  Airedale  sort 
of  person,  being  her  husband  by  way  of  diversion. 
The  clerks  in  the  bank  and  the  little  railroad 
offices  held  Mrs.  Ogler  in  great  awe;  but  a  little 
awe  more  or  less  did  not  spoil  Mrs.  Ogler.  She 
went  right  on  investing  the  fabulous  salary  that 
town  gossip  paid  her  in  shirt  waists  that  made 
the  angels  in  the  Boston  Store  weep. 

Day  after  day  and  year  after  year  her  em 
ployer  leaned  more  and  more  heavily  on  her.  She 
was  his  memory  in  a  score  of  business  deals,  and 
in  certain  ways  she  was  his  judgment.  A  cheer 
ful,  normal,  wholesome  sort  of  person  she  was; 
and  perhaps  her  continued  presence  gave  Her- 
rington  some  vague  idea  of  what  he  had  missed 
in  life.  He  knew  he  was  too  old  to  amass  a  first- 
class  fortune;  his  little  million  did  not  satisfy  him; 
yet  he  felt  the  money  clutch  of  his  fingers  grow 


228  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

clumsy.     Life  was  drab  and  dreary,  and  he  did 
not  understand  why. 

Occasionally  he  caught  himself  using  the  wrong 
word  and  the  wrong  name,  and  doing  absent- 
minded  things.  One  day  he  sat  drumming  on  the 
table  while  the  woman  worked.  At  length  he 
spoke,  clearing  his  throat: 

"  By  the  way,  Nellie,"  he  asked,  looking  at  her 
intently,  "what  did  I  call  you  a  moment  ago?'5 
'Why,   Connie.     You  often  call  me  that  — 
here  lately." 

Herrington's  hands  hovered  over  his  desk, 
vainly  trying  to  find  something  to  pick  up ;  and  he 
dropped  his  eyes  and  said: 

'Yes  —  Conway;  that  was  the  name  of  the 
clerk  I  had  ten  years  ago.  Nice  boy!  "  he  added, 
trying  to  smile. 

The  woman  went  on  with  her  work,  aware  that 
the  hard  steely  old  eyes  were  on  her;  but  she 
could  not  know  that  the  thought  had  framed  itself 
definitely  in  his  mind  that  he  was  getting  nothing 
out  of  life.  As  he  looked  at  the  woman  —  trim, 
clean,  fresh,  blooming,  and  sound  to  the  core  — 
he  contrasted  her  with  the  false,  kittenish,  stale  old 
woman  who  was  his  wife;  and  he  realised  with 


"A  PROSPEROUS  GENTLEMAN"     229 

a  pang  that  Mrs.  Ogler's  husband  was  only  a 
poor  clerk. 

Then  some  nerve  or  vein  or  fiber  in  his  brain 
whisked  itself  out  of  gear  and  Herrington,  in  the 
realisation  of  his  vast  impotence,  became  obsessed. 

PART  III 

There  is  a  form  of  romantic  dementia  that  at 
tacks  certain  men  in  the  early  adolescence  of  their 
senility.  It  is  hard  to  say  whether  or  not  this  mad 
ness  is  more  grotesque  than  the  puppy  love  of  early 
youth.  Perhaps  because  age  is  supposed  to  be 
more  circumspect  than  youth  the  capers  of  the  old 
man  and  the  young  woman  — •  for  always  he  is 
enamoured  of  youth  —  are  more  fantastic  than 
those  of  the  young.  Or  perhaps  in  the  earlier 
affairs  of  life  both  the  man  and  the  woman  are 
dancing  to  the  same  tune  in  their  blood  and  the 
dance  is  more  seemly.  But,  whatever  sets  love's 
sweet  song  off-key  in  the  calf  love  of  early  senility, 
something  does  jar  it  and  all  the  world  laughs. 

There  followed,  like  the  course  of  a  malady,  a 
rising  tide  of  what  might  be  called  a  foxy  folly  in 
the  Herrington  breast;  and  this  folly  showed  itself 
in  a  network  of  vast  circumlocutions,  meant  to  at- 


230  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

tract  the  woman's  personal  attention.  A  score  of 
times  a  day  he  managed  to  touch  her  foot  or  hand 
or  arm;  and  he  begged  her  pardon  rather  elabo 
rately. 

He  began  showering  the  two  men  stenographers 
in  the  office  with  cigars  and  baseball  tickets,  in 
order  to  pass  a  few  boxes  of  candy  and  some 
flowers  to  Mrs.  Ogler.  And  once,  six  months 
after  the  outbreak  of  his  malady,  she  found  a 
fifty-dollar  bill  in  a  box  of  chocolates.  She  pinned 
it  to  a  letter  in  the  morning's  mail  —  a  letter  from 
one  of  his  disagreeable  creditors  who  was  trying 
to  settle  a  disputed  bill  —  and  left  it  on  Mr.  Her- 
rington's  desk,  without  a  word. 

When  the  woman  let  him  see  her  annoyance  at 
his  silliness  he  sighed  and  moped,  and  made  her 
work  harder;  but  she  could  feel  as  the  months 
passed  that  whatever  madness  was  in  his  dull  old 
head  was  growing.  She  could  not  know  that  it 
had  its  root  in  the  man's  barren  life,  his  utter  lack 
of  any  vital  hold  on  things  worth  while.  She 
saw  only  a  capering  old  fool,  making  grotesque 
and  horrible,  something  that  in  youth  might  have 
been  beautiful.  But  Herrington,  finding  that  the 
insanity  of  a  life  of  getting  had  gone  unbearably 


"  A  PROSPEROUS  GENTLEMAN  "     231 

stale,  plunged  into  this  fatuous  make-believe  of 
love  with  all  the  eager  greed  of  his  nature;  and 
Mrs.  Ogler  saw  that  she  must  fight. 

So  she  planned  her  campaign.  She  planned 
it  one  Sunday  when  the  Herrington  electric  car 
offered  for  her  use  had  twice  gone  home  from  her 
door  empty.  She  said  nothing  to  the  Airedale, 
but  on  Monday  morning  sent  him  on  an  all-day 
errand  to  the  construction  department  of  the  rail 
road. 

When  Herrington  came  swinging  jauntily  into 
the  office,  with  his  cock-eye  softened  as  it  turned 
upon  her,  Mrs.  Ogler  closed  the  door  and  sat  op 
posite  to  him  at  the  mahogany  table.  She  met  his 
calf-like  leer  without  flinching.  He  opened  his 
mouth  as  though  to  speak,  when  she  interrupted 
him. 

"  This,"  she  cried  sharply,  "  is  " —  she  paused 
— "nonsense!"  And  she  repeated  firmly: 
"Miserable  nonsense!  And  what's  more,  Mr. 
Herrington,  youVe  been  too  good  to  me  in  the  past 
for  me  to  stand  it.  Quit  it !  Quit  it !  "  she  cried. 

Herrington  started  round  the  table.  His  eyes 
were  glowing  and  his  steps  uncertain.  She  rose 
quickly  and  put  her  finger  on  the  call  button. 


23  2  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

"None  of  that!  "  she  snapped. 

"  Oh,  Connie !  "  He  stopped.  His  ear 
caught  the  word  he  had  uttered.  His  mouth 
worked  vainly.  He  spat  out  bitter  ashes  a  mo 
ment  and  went  on:  "  Oh,  no  —  Nellie,  I  mean. 
You  know  what  I  mean  —  I  mean  you  —  you  — 
you  —  Con — " 

He  was  becoming  distraught  at  his  own  words ; 
but  he  went  on  excitedly: 

u  I  want  to  give  you  —  it's  not  just  money  — 
that's  not  it  —  not  money;  but  larkspurs.  No, 
no !  "  Horror  blazed  through  his  steely  eyes 
frantically.  There  was  no  passion  in  his  voice, 
but  a  miserable  determination,  cold  and  mad,  as 
he  slowly  picked  his  words:  "  No  —  no!  Oh, 
God  — •  Oh,  God,  damn  that  wormwood  on  my 
tongue !  It's  —  my  " —  he  paused  and  took  the 
next  syllable  — •"  name  —  my  name,"  he  repeated 
quickly.  "  Not  just  money  I  want  to  give  you, 
Connie!" 

At  the  sound  of  that  name  he  let  out  a  bleat  of 
terror  and  wilted  into  his  chair,  with  his  hands 
nervously  fingering  his  desk.  A  sudden  and  deep- 
planted  resolution  came  to  Herrington  and  he 
spoke  again: 


"  A  PROSPEROUS  GENTLEMAN  "     233 

"I  —  I  want  —  to  —  to —  I'll  sacrifice 
heaven  and  earth  —  all  withered  and  faded  — " 

Again  he  seemed  to  be  spitting  ashes,  appalled. 
The  woman  stared  amazed  at  the  old  man.  She 
was  speechless  for  a  moment,  while  dread  over 
came  her  loathing.  He  rose  in  a  palsy  of  fright. 
A  kind  of  infantile  questioning  agony  spread  over 
his  face  as  he  stood,  with  twitching  mouth,  chok 
ing  down  the  words  that  kept  swelling  to  his  lips. 

The  man  and  woman,  gazing  dumbly  at  each 
other,  saw  that  something  bigger  than  a  dotard's 
passion  had  come  into  the  room.  The  woman 
stepped  to  a  water  bottle  and  handed  him  a  drink. 
His  weak  hands  carried  it  slowly  to  his  quivering 
lips. 

"  Yes,  Nellie  —  that's  better.  The  larksp— " 
He  shook  his  head  hopelessly. 

*  You  are  ill,  Mr.  Herrington,"  answered  the 
woman.  He  nodded.  She  stood  in  doubt  a  few 
seconds  and  then  said:  "But,  of  course,  Mr. 
Herrington,  I  must  not  work  here  any  longer. 
I've  transferred  myself  in  this  letter."  She 
pointed  to  a  sheet  of  paper  prepared  on  her  desk. 
"  I've  issued  an  order  transferring  myself  to  the 
passenger  department  —  if  you  don't  mind.  I 


234  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

can  help  you  —  there  —  if  you  need  help  at  any 
time;  but  I  can't  work  here." 

Again  he  nodded,  afraid  to  speak.  She  turned 
to  her  desk  and  the  old  man  sat  trying  his  lips  and 
mouth  in  whispers  for  a  long  time.  At  length 
he  spoke. 

"  I'm  all  right  now,  Nellie  —  I  believe." 

"  Very  well,  Mr.  Herrington,"  replied  the 
woman  as  her  finger  pressed  the  call  button.  In 
the  seconds  that  elapsed  before  the  door  opened 
she  added:  "I'm  sorry  —  very  sorry  for  you, 
sir;  but  I'm  going  now."  To  the  man  who  ap 
peared  with  his  notebook  she  continued: 
*  There's  nothing  important  in  the  mail  but  the 
request  for  Mr.  Herrington's  opinion  on  the 
Canal-tolls  repeal  from  the  Senate  committee. 
Find  the  rate  facts  in  file  K  —  not  the  private  file. 
Mr.  Herrington  will  explain.  I  must  be  out  of 
the  office  this  morning." 

The  heads  of  departments  who  saw  Mr.  Her 
rington  that  summer  remarked  that  he  whispered 
to  himself  much  of  the  time,  and  that  he  had  a 
baffled  uncertainty  in  his  eyes.  The  traffic  depart 
ment  said  to  the  maintenance  department :  "  The 
chief's  not  up  to  his  top  form  these  days."  So  his 


"A  PROSPEROUS  GENTLEMAN"     235 

subordinates  took  as  much  work  away  from  him 
as  they  could,  without  letting  him  know  it. 

His  silent  habit  seemed  for  a  few  months  to 
be  growing  on  him.  When  he  spoke  it  was  in 
monosyllables.  He  took  to  writing  his  orders 
on  a  tablet,  which  was  ever  before  him,  and  with 
a  grunt  handing  the  written  order  to  the  proper 
clerk.  He  wrote  fluently,  and  scribbled  notes 
for  his  stenographers  on  the  backs  and  tops  and 
sides  of  the  letters  that  came  to  his  desk;  but 
gradually,  as  the  summer  waned,  his  fear  of  speech 
lessened  and  he  became  less  taciturn.  He  de 
veloped  a  ponderous  habit  of  weighing  every  word 
before  he  uttered  it;  so  men  thought  him  exceed 
ingly  wise. 

It  was  in  September  when  an  Interstate  Com 
merce  Commissioner,  seeking  to  maintain  the 
long-and-short-haul  clause  of  the  Federal  law, 
came  to  New  Raynham  at  the  request  of  the 
Chamber  of  Commerce.  The  town  was  demand 
ing  its  place  on  the  commercial  map.  President 
Herrington,  of  the  N.  R.  &  G.,  was  backing  up 
the  demand;  for  if  the  town  could  get  the  advan 
tage  of  its  geographical  location  it  would  mean 
better  rates  for  his  road.  So  he  consented  to 


236  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

preside  at  the  banquet  given  by  the  town  to  the 
investigating  commissioner. 

It  was  something  like  a  day  of  triumph  for 
Herrington,  for  he  found  himself  backing  a  town 
enterprise  in  which  his  own  self-interest  lay;  so 
he  rose  in  his  place  at  the  head  of  the  table  on 
the  night  of  the  banquet  with  a  renaissance  of 
the  Herrington  grin  on  his  face  —  the  grin  that 
had  been  drooping  for  nearly  a  decade. 

The  flutter  of  handclapping  that  greeted  him 
died  away,  and  he  smiled  his  flinty,  steely,  cock 
eyed  smile  at  the  banqueters.  He  felt  secure ;  for 
he  held  in  his  hand,  partly  concealed,  the  card  on 
which  he  had  written  his  opening  remarks.  They 
stared  at  him  in  his  familiar,  exact  handwriting, 
and  he  beamed. 

"  My  pleasure,"  he  began,  grinning  cheerfully, 
"  is  all  withered  — " 

The  crowd,  preparing  for  some  light  play  of 
words,  saw  instead  a  white  pall  mantle  Herring- 
ton's  face  as  he  stammered:  "  All  fade — " 

His  eyes  became  fixed,  as  though  he  were  look 
ing  at  some  specter.  He  stood  for  a  second,  stiff 
and  panting,  glaring  at  his  unseen  enemy.  Then 
he  sank  down  slowly  into  his  chair,  crying  hoarsely : 


"  A  PROSPEROUS  GENTLEMAN  "     237 

"  God!  —  God!  —  God!  "  and  dropped  his  chin 
on  his  shirt-front.  When  they  rushed  to  him  he 
sat  tight-lipped  and  grim.  He  would  not  answer 
their  questions.  So  they  led  him  from  the  hall. 
They  put  him  in  his  car  and  telephoned  to  his 
home  that  he  was  ill. 

The  next  day  they  took  him  to  a  Chicago  nerve 
specialist.  Herrington  seemed  more  or  less  dazed 
at  times  and  began  to  grow  homesick.  At  the  end 
of  a  week  he  was  crying  pitifully  to  go  home. 

At  home  they  could  not  keep  him  in  bed.  He 
would  wander  through  the  grounds  about  his 
house  like  an  old  dog  looking  for  something.  He 
would  not  speak,  and  cried  when  the  attendant 
stood  too  near  him;  but  always  he  would  go  into 
that  part  of  the  grounds  where  the  old-fashioned 
garden  flourished.  There  they  often  found  him 
staring  dumbly  at  the  old-fashioned  flowers,  ap 
parently  listening;  and  many  times  the  attendant 
behind  the  lilac  bush  heard  the  old  man  whimper: 

"  The  larkspurs  are  faded  —  all  withered  and 
faded!  The  larkspurs  are  faded  —  like  me!" 

This  he  would  whisper  over  and  over,  and  sigh. 
Then  he  would  look  round  carefully,  as  though 
to  find  the  larkspurs ;  but  the  larkspurs  were  gone. 


238  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

On  a  fair,  clear  day  in  late  autumn  Elias  Hig- 
ginson  was  digging  in  a  pit,  up  to  his  hips.  Beside 
him  was  a  rickety  little  old  man,  with  a  short 
breath  and  a  misery  in  his  back.  The  little  old 
man  from  time  to  time  leaned  on  his  shovel  and 
held  one  hand  to  his  back;  but  Elias  went  on 
gouging  the  earth  with  his  pick.  Finally  the 
silence  became  torturing  beyond  endurance  and  the 
little  old  man  asked : 

"Gravel  under  this  ?" 

"  Not  for  a  while  yet,"  responded  Elias;  and  he 
did  not  look  up. 

Another  long  quarter  of  an  hour  passed,  when 
Elias  suddenly  burst  forth: 

"  I  was  a-thinkin'  of  him,"  he  mused. 

The  little  rickety  man  gasped  slightly  and  re 
sponded: 

"  Oh,  yes."  And  added:  "  What  about  that 
wireless  you  hear  so  much  about?  Do  you  sup 
pose  it's  so  —  savin'  of  them  boats  —  or  just  what 
you  read  in  the  papers?  " 

"  Of  him !  "  returned  Elias  doggedly. 

The  rickety  man  dropped  his  shovel  for  the 
hundredth  time  and  picked  it  up  wearily,  but  did 
not  reply.  At  the  end  of  a  long  pause,  in  which  the 


"  A  PROSPEROUS  GENTLEMAN  "     239 

old  man  several  times  seemed  about  to  go  to  work 
and  then  thought  better  of  it,  Elias  burst  forth : 

"  The  last  time  I  saw  him  he  had  his  overcoat 
on  out  in  the  garden  —  her  garden,"  he  added, 
looking  sharply  at  his  companion. 

The  old  man  had  fallen  to  work  and  was  try 
ing  not  to  hear  what  was  going  on;  but  his  curi 
osity  got  the  better  of  his  goose-flesh  and  he  asked : 

"  Whose  garden?  " —  and  held  his  back  for  the 
reply. 

"  None  o'  your  damn'  business  whose  garden ! 
His  wife's  garden  —  whose  do  you  suppose?  " 

"  Oh!  "  cut  in  the  old  man  timidly;  and  Elias 
went  on: 

"  Right  there  in  her  garden  —  same  as  that  — 
where  I  seen  him  thirty-odd  year  ago  —  right 
there  under  the  lilacs,  shiverin'  in  his  damn'  hoss 
blanket  of  a  overcoat  —  where  I've  crept  up  and 
peeked  at  him  a  damn'  site  hotter'n  that !  " 

The  little  old  man  tried  not  to  listen;  but  Elias, 
tearing  the  earth  with  his  pick,  cried  angrily: 

"And  now  he's  colder'n  ever!  You  bet  he's 
cold  enough  now  1  " 

The  rickets  in  the  old  man  set  him  a-flutter.  He 
did  not  like  the  subject.  Elias  went  on: 


240  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

"  As  I  was  sayin',  I  passed  the  iron  palin's 
of  his  garden  and  stopped  to  have  a  look  at  'im. 
And  they  was  a  couple  passin' —  same  as  that  — 
and  she  says  to  her  man :  '  A  old  man  settin'  in 
a  autumn  garden  —  how  very  poetical !  '  she  says 
—  same  as  that.  An'  they  didn't  know  he  was 
dotty,  and  I  didn't  tell  'em.  They  stopped  by 
me  and  the  man  says :  *  How  very  dignified  he 
looks  there  in  the  autumn  of  life,  amid  the  cosmos 
and  buddin'  chrysanthemums !  How  calm !  How 
peaceful !  ' 

1  When  the  storm  of  life  is  past,'  she  says  — 
same  as  that  —  linin'  out  the  hymn.  And  him 
a-settin'  there,  jabberin'  under  his  breath  and 
starin'  at  the  flowerbed  like  a  idjot!  " 

Elias  stood  aside  to  let  the  shoveler  get  at  his 
dirt  pile,  and  went  on: 

"  But  they  never  noticed  it.  They  kept  sayin', 
*  How  poetic !  ' —  and  all  that  — '  a  old  man,  after 
the  passion  of  life,  settin'  among  the  passionless 
flowers  ' —  same  as  that !  '  Oh,  hell !  '  I  says  to 
myself  and  to  them.  I  ast :  l  Did  you  know  this 
'ere  party?'  And  they  says:  'No;  who  was 
he?'  And  I  says:  *  Well,  you  bet  his  name  is 
Dennis  now  ' — same  as  that!  " 


"A  PROSPEROUS  GENTLEMAN"     241 

The  old  rickety  man  shuddered  and  whispered: 

"  Is  the  party's  name  Dennis?  " 

"  You've  said  it,"  replied  Elias,  getting  back 
to  his  work.  He  went  on :  "  But  when  I  first 
knowed  him  he  went  by  another  name.  Folks 
used  to  call  him  Prince  Charmin' —  same  as  that." 

He  laughed  and  jeered.  "  Prince  Charmin' ! 
Even  as  a  boy  in  school  I  knowed  him  —  him  a 
little  boy ;  one  o'  them  nicey,  spicey  boys  — 
boughten  sleds,  boughten  wagons,  silver  skates, 
spangle-topped  boots  —  and  all  that.  And  then 
later  on  he  come  along,  bustin'  it  up  with  me  an' 
her  —  Prince  Charmin'!  Prince  Charmin',  with 
his  pretty  yaller-molasses  moustache,  and  his  tooth 
pick  shoes  and  dude  breeches,  skin-tight.  Oh,  I 
remember  him !  And  me  nothin'  but  a  farmer  boy 
with  a  buckboard;  and  him  comin'  sailin'  up  with 
his  red-wheeled  rig!  Prince  Charmin'!  A  hell 
of  a  Prince  Charmin'  he  looked,  all  scrooched  up 
in  his  overcoat  there  in  her  garden!  " 

"  Whose  garden?  "  asked  the  rickety  man,  con 
fused,  and  to  seem  to  be  making  talk. 

Elias  stopped  to  look  at  the  dull  eyes  staring 
at  him  and  the  stupid  face. 

"  His  wife's  —  whose  do  you  suppose?  "     He 


242  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

went  on  digging  for  a  time  and  then  broke  out 
again:  "  An'  then  pretty  soon  the  man  and  the 
girl  moved  off;  and  this  'ere  party  I  was  speakin' 
of,  he  came  — " 

"  The  party?  "  queried  the  rickety  man  timidly, 
looking  at  the  hole  beneath  him. 

"Name's  Dennis  —  same  as  that!"  went  on 
Elias.  "  He  come  shufflin'  over  to  the  palin'  and 
the  keeper  come  up  beside  him;  and  he  stared  at 
me,  this  here  Prince  Charmin'  did,  and  he  jabbers: 
'The  larkspurs  is  faded;  all  withered  an'  faded 

—  all  withered  an'  faded  —  like  me !  ' —  same  as 
that.     And  he  stares  at  me  and  don't  know  me; 
and  then — :  and  then" — the  pick  went  hungrily 
into  the  earth  again  and  again  before  Elias  fin 
ished  his  sentence;  he  gave  it  a  final  bite  of  anger 
and  went  on  — u  an'  then  I  knowed  him  —  knowed 
my  Prince  Charmin'  for  all  these  thirty-odd  years 

—  same  as  that ! 

"  For,  I  tell  you,  hidin'  behind  that  same  lilac 
bush,  I  heard  her  beggin'  him  and  pleadin'  with 
him;  and  as  he  slunk  off  like  a  houn'  dog  I  heard 
her  say  them  same  words,  same  as  that  —  same  as 
that!  And  I've  carried  'em  in  my  head  and  he's 
carried  'em  in  his  head  —  him  and  me.  And  why 


"  A  PROSPEROUS  GENTLEMAN  "     243 

I  didn't  kill  him  that  night  —  kill  him  like  the 
dog  I  knowed  he  was  —  same  as  that  —  there  an' 
then,  I  never  can  tell;  except  that  he  was  this  here 
Prince  Charmin'  an'  I  was  a  farmer  lyin'  behind 
the  lilacs,  sufferin'  like  a  dumb  animal  —  for  her." 

"  For  who?  "  asked  the  old  man,  sitting  on  the 
dirt  mound,  cleaning  his  shovel  with  a  stick. 

"  His  wife  —  who  do  you  suppose?  "  retorted 
Elias,  glaring  at  the  weak-minded  man.  "  I 
thought  I  knowed,  when  he  was  gettin'  the  jury 
out  of  town  —  one  at  a  time  all  those  years  — 
what  was  in  his  heart;  and  I  thought  I  knowed 
why  he  always  wanted  me  to  leave  —  not  'at  he 
ever  heard  of  me  and  her,  but  because  I  got  on 
that  jury  and  tried  to  swing  it  agin  him.  So,  Mr. 
Prince  Charmin',  that  was  the  canker  in  your 
heart,  eh?  —  same  as  that!  An'  you  growed 
rich  and  you  growed  richer;  and  you  got  littler 
an'  littler  as  you  got  things  —  as  a  body  always 
does  who  lays  up  treasure  in  this  earth  —  same 
as  that! 

"  And  you  growed  rich  and  you  growed  richer, 
and  smaller  and  smaller,  till  yer  little  sodderin' 
pot  of  a  hell  inside  you  jest  naturally  burnt  all 
the  pith  out  of  you,  and  you  was  a  poetical-lookin' 


244  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

old  party,  white-haired  and  leather-skinned,  a- 
dyin'  in  a  old-fashioned  garden  —  a-dyin'  at  the 
top !  "  He  stopped  talking  and  bent  to  his  pick 
in  silence. 

The  rickety  old  man  was  afraid  of  the  silence 
and  said,  as  he  mopped  his  forehead:  "Hot 
work,  ain't  it?  " 

Elias  dug  on  without  replying. 

"  He  goes  to  the  gravel,"  remarked  Elias  as 
his  pick  struck  the  little  stones.  "  We'll  have  to 
make  'im  a  concrete  bed  —  nice  and  soft!  Oh, 
you  Charmin'  Prince  —  you  Prince  Charmin', 
with  your  sodderin'-pot  hell  in  your  belly,  how 
much  have  you  bested  me?  " 

"  Meanin'  the  party?"  questioned  the  rickety 
old  man. 

"  Same  as  that!  "  rejoined  Elias. 

'  Whose  name  is  Dennis?  "  persisted  the  shove- 
ler,  looking  furtively  at  the  hole. 

;'  Whose  name  is  just  that !  "  answered  Elias 
as  he  buried  his  pick  in  the  gravel. 

The  reporter  for  the  New  Raynham  Tribune 
—  owned  by  the  N.  R.  &  G.  interests  —  was  in 
structed  by  the  managing  editor  to  turn  himself 


"  A  PROSPEROUS  GENTLEMAN  "     245 

loose  on  the  funeral.  So  he  told  how  the  male 
choir  sang  Crossing  the  Bar,  and  Lead,  Kindly 
Light;  how  two  preachers  prayed  and  another 
read  the  Scripture  lesson;  and  printed  in  full  the 
remarks  of  the  bishop  who  delivered  the  eulogy. 
At  the  end  of  the  article  the  reporter  appended 
a  list  of  the  railroad  nobility  from  all  over  the 
West  who  had  sent  floral  offerings,  and  he  de 
scribed  some  of  the  grander  set  pieces  of  hothouse 
flowers  —  gates  ajar,  broken  columns,  American 
Beauty  palls,  and  other  floral  gewgaws;  but  he 
did  not  tell  how  empty  and  meaningless  they  are 
—  those  hothouse  flowers.  For,  after  all,  it  is 
the  seasonal  procession  of  the  flowers  of  the  field, 
growing  gently  and  beautifully  more  serene  and 
glorified  as  the  season  runs  its  course,  that  typify 
life. 


THE  GODS  ARRIVE 
PART  I 

ONCE  upon  a  time  —  and  the  time  was  in  the 
latter  half  of  the  first  decade  of  the  twentieth  cen 
tury,  when  strange  new  currents  were  running 
through  the  minds  of  men  —  in  a  certain  small 
town  in  the  Missouri  Valley  there  sat  at  night  in 
a  smelly  little  newspaper  office,  rather  poorly 
lighted,  in  the  midst  of  a  great  throng  that  watched 
anxiously  bulletins  which  flashed  on  a  dead  wall 
near  by,  a  congressman. 

The  congressman  was  a  pudgy,  soft-handed, 
short-legged,  thin-haired,  pink-browed,  clabber- 
jowled  congressman,  all  swathed  about  as  to  his 
pod-like  torso  in  a  white  vest,  draped  in  a  black 
frock  coat.  His  name  was  Joel  Ladgett.  Joel 
Ladgett  was  the  famous  author  of  the  Ladgett 
Bill.  He  sat  rolling  a  dead  cigar  from  one  side  of 
his  loose,  coarse  mouth  to  the  other,  displaying  a 
set  of  big,  uneven  teeth,  badly  battered  by  time. 
His  jaw  was  coming  unscrewed  and  was  wabbling 

—  almost  visibly. 

246 


THE  GODS  ARRIVE  247 

He  held  in  his  small,  soft  hands  a  yellow  tele 
gram  and  was  reading  it  over  and  over,  and  over 
again.  Outside,  the  contents  of  the  telegram  were 
shining  on  the  dead  wall ;  and  in  the  summer  breeze 
that  played  through  the  south  window  near  the 
congressman  he  could  hear  the  hum  of  the  crowd. 
Somebody  started  a  cheer;  but  the  cheer  was  not 
successful  and  a  faint  clapping  of  hands  died  away 
fatuously. 

The  crowd  knew  that  Mrs.  Ladgett  sa.t  beside 
the  congressman  and  his  enemies  banked  the  bon 
fires  of  their  exultation.  It  was  the  first  primary 
for  choosing  a  congressman  ever  held  in  the  dis 
trict;  and  on  that  yellow  slip  of  paper,  containing 
the  news  from  four  of  the  seven  counties  of  the  dis 
trict  —  there,  impersonally  and  irrevocably  —  the 
finger  of  Fate  spelled  his  defeat. 

Defeat  in  a  convention,  with  the  tumult  and  the 
shouting  of  the  captains,  softens  political  death 
by  dramatizing  it.  Often  the  vanquished  has 
something  of  value  to  trade  with  the  victor,  and 
thus  defeat  is  not  complete.  It  may  mean  a  slow- 
turning  movement  —  as,  say,  to  a  Federal  judge- 
ship,  or  a  receivership,  or  a  state  office.  Or  it 
may  mean  any  of  the  thousand  feather  beds  of 


248  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

political  consolation  wherewith  politicians  ease 
their  wounded  and  dying.  But  Congressman  Lad- 
gett's  defeat  at  the  primary  was  just  cold,  hard, 
miserable,  unmitigated  defeat.  His  hands  sank 
trembling  to  his  lap  and  his  eyes  filled,  and  he  be 
gan  trying  to  choke  down  the  sobs  that  were  rising 
in  his  heart. 

The  yellow  sheet  slipped  to  the  floor.  A  lank, 
leathery  man,  who  stood  at  attention,  as  a  sort  of 
courier  or  herald  or  outrider,  near  the  Person, 
stooped  to  pick  up  the  paper,  and,  as  he  rose,  cried: 
'  That's  what  your  pure  democracy  does  to  a 
man!"  Rising,  the  lank  courtier  put  a  horny 
brown  hand  out,  grasped  the  flabby  little  paw  that 
dropped  loosely  from  beneath  the  white  vest;  and 
the  tall  man  said  gently:  "  It's  all  right,  Judge 
—  it's  all  right.  I'd  lots  rather  go  down  with  you 
than  with — " 

"Hiram!" 

The  man  turned  his  face  toward  Mrs.  Ladgett, 
a  monumental  person  with  three  chins. 

"  Hiram,"  she  repeated,  "  get  a  hack  —  Joel  is 
tired;  tell  it  to  come  to  the  alley;  I  don't  want  them 
to  see  him." 

"  The   situation,   madam,   certainly  does  seem 


THE  GODS  ARRIVE  249 

— "  Larson  replied;  but  a  look  from  the  woman  al 
most  batted  him  out  of  the  room. 

No  emotion  shook  the  woman's  voice;  yet  her 
face  was  burning  with  wrath.  She  stood  four- 
squared  to  whatever  winds  were  blowing  through 
her  soul  and  gave  orders  like  a  ship's  captain  in  a 
gale.  She  looked  at  the  tall  man  beside  her  and 
directed  his  eyes  to  the  figure  of  the  congressman. 
It  had  slumped.  The  face  was  hidden  and  the 
hands  were  clasped  above  the  half-bald  head;  and 
the  slanting  shoulders  were  nervously  pumping  as 
the  man  wept.  The  woman  said  instantly : 

"  Keep  the  boys  in  the  office  away  from  him. 
Get  the  hack,  quick!  " 

As  Hiram  Larson  left  the  room  Mrs.  Ladgett 
locked  the  door  behind  him,  and  stood  beside  her 
husband.  She  did  not  whimper;  nor  did  she  touch 
him  for  a  minute,  but  let  his  anguish  spend  itself. 
Then  she  said: 

"Joel  — Joel!"  She  found  his  hands.  "Joel, 
you  —  you  mustn't  —  not  here  —  not  now !  " 

He  raised  his  grief-riven  face,  all  working  with 
shame,  and  whimpered: 

"  But  my  life  —  my  work !  It's  all  over !  It's 
all  done!" 


250  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

When  the  royal  party  was  gone  and  the  editor's 
room  deserted,  the  crowd  in  the  office,  where  the 
telegraph  instrument  was  clicking  out  the  details  of 
his  defeat,  knew  vaguely  that  Congressman  Lad- 
gett  had  in  some  way  broken  under  the  news.  No 
one  laughed;  men  were  constrained.  They  shook 
their  heads  and  sighed:  "Too  bad!" — even 
those  who  had  contributed  their  votes  to  the  land 
slide  that  overcame  him. 

The  clicking  instrument  was  bringing  news  of 
similar  defeats  from  elsewhere  in  the  state,  and  for 
months  the  primaries  in  other  states  had  been 
mowing  down  men  of  the  Ladgett  type  all  over  the 
nation.  So  the  town  about  him  was  prepared  for 
the  overthrow  of  Ladgett.  But  though  the  con 
gressman  had  seen  his  fellows  drop  before  the 
grim  reaper  with  the  new  weapon  of  democracy,  he 
had  imagined  himself  safe.  He  had  his  organisa 
tion  —  the  strongest  in  the  state  —  all  bristling 
with  postmasters  under  the  control  of  Hiram  Lar 
son.  The  congressman  also  had  the  district  at 
torney,  the  revenue  collectors  and  their  deputies, 
and  the  flunkies  of  the  Federal  court.  He  had 
Boyce  Kilworth's  money  —  all  he  needed  of  it; 
and  the  golden  touch  of  the  Kilworth  money  never 


THE  GODS  ARRIVE  251 

before  had  failed  to  do  everything  but  raise  the 
dead. 

And  then,  of  course  — •  and  the  congressman  did 
not  minimise  this  point  —  there  was  his  splendid 
record:  his  high  place  in  the  House,  his  great 
power  with  the  Administration,  the  fame  of  the 
Ladgett  Bill,  and  his  place  on  The  Committee. 
Even  the  congressman  himself  capitalised  The 
Committee  when  he  spoke  of  it,  for  it  awed  him 
with  its  power. 

No  matter  how  jauntily  he  pranced  before  the 
newer  members  across  the  floor  of  the  House,  with 
the  red  carnation  in  his  coat  lapel  —  the  red  carna 
tion  that  set  him  apart  and  made  him  a  member  of 
the  autocracy  —  The  Committee,  even  to  him,  was 
a  holy  of  holies,  and  his  membership  in  it  seemed 
to  guarantee  him  against  ordinary  mortal  mis 
haps.  Politically  he  thought  himself  one  of  the 
deathless  gods.  He  marvelled  that  a  member  of 
The  Committee  could  eat  and  sleep  and  function 
physically  as  other  men  functioned;  so,  when  the 
avalanche  hit  him,  when  the  last  definite  telegram 
unmistakably  revealed  the  truth  to  him,  Congress 
man  Ladgett's  whole  universe  came  crashing  in. 
He  could  see  no  moral  control  of  creation,  no  pur- 


252  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

poseful  guidance,  no  plan  or  scheme  or  direction 
to  it. 

It  was  a  week  before  he  could  show  himself  to 
the  town;  but  in  that  week  the  red  corpuscles  of 
hope  began  building  round  the  congressman's 
heart.  A  thousand  plans  developed  in  his  mind  to 
bring  back  the  seat  he  had  lost.  Two  years,  he 
thought,  would  give  him  a  needed  rest;  but  it 
would  do  more.  The  two  years  would  prove  to 
Boyce  Kilworth  that  his  tin  mills  could  not  run 
without  a  congressman.  Rates,  schedules,  duties 
—  specific  and  ad  valorem  —  trailed  through  his 
head  in  endless  procession  as  he  built  his  life 
firmly  into  the  structure  of  his  country's  future. 
For  he  saw  life  not  as  a  moving  picture  on  the  reel ; 
he  saw  it  rather  as  a  tableau  set  in  the  static  calm 
of  some  Elysian  Field,  with  the  gods  of  things  as 
they  are  in  full  dominion,  and  with  congressmen 
and  manufactures  moving  together  in  a  common 
orbit  of  magnificence,  dependent  on  each  other, 
glorifying  each  other  in  heavenly  harmony  for 
ever.  So  the  hope  in  his  heart  charged  his  mind 
with  an  unshaken  conviction  that  the  universe  re 
quired  him  in  its  divine  economy. 

As  he  sat  in  his  rooms  at  the  Astor  House, 


THE  GODS  ARRIVE  253 

where  Hiram  Larson  was  the  host,  and  there,  re 
arranging  to  his  purpose  the  fragments  about  him 
of  the  wreck  of  matter,  he  read  the  press  clippings 
that  came  flooding  in  on  him  from  the  Clipping 
Bureau.  Hiram  used  to  come  to  the  royal  bed 
chamber  betimes,  and,  after  reviewing  what  he  re 
ferred  to  as  the  Situation  for  an  hour,  he  would 
slip  out  of  the  pile  of  newspaper  cuttings  those 
which  indicated  in  a  rather  definite  way  that  the 
congressman's  district  had  shown  itself  stark  mad, 
in  retiring  such  a  distinguished  statesman.  And 
these  clippings  the  cupbearer  of  Parnassus  would 
read  exultingly  on  the  streets  of  New  Raynham  to 
such  gross  cattle  as  he  thought  might  be  prodded 
to  repent  of  their  ruthless  conduct;  but  Hiram 
never  was  able  to  report  any  change  in  the  Situa 
tion.  The  Situation  always  was  grave  with  Hi 
ram  —  grave  or  acute. 

Finally  Mrs.  Ladgett  decided  that  the  congress 
man  should  appear  on  Constitution  Street,  in  the 
marts  of  trade,  where  the  author  of  the  Ladgett 
Bill  was  used  to  the  adulation  of  the  multitude. 
He  made  his  public  appearance  in  his  long  coat, 
his  white  vest,  his  immaculately  creased  trousers, 
his  high  hat.  For  twenty  years  in  this  regalia 


254  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

he  had  swept  the  town  before  him  as  the  wind 
bends  the  grainfield.  Yet  that  first  day  his  regalia 
did  not  seem  to  be  achieving  all  it  should  have 
achieved.  Men  were  patronizingly  polite ;  and  that 
cut  him.  And  some  men,  whom  he  knew  were 
lying  to  him,  professed  sympathy;  and  that  an 
gered  him. 

Because  Mrs.  Ladgett  had  insisted  that  he  go 
to  the  bank,  he  went;  though  he  knew  his  over 
draft  was  wide  and  deep,  and  that  his  past-due 
paper  was  baled  in  a  withered  bundle.  Boyce 
Kilworth,  of  the  Traders  National,  for  thirty 
years  had  been  a  sort  of  foster  Providence  to  the 
congressman,  controlling  his  destinies  at  home  and, 
through  New  York  channels,  guiding  his  Wash 
ington  career.  In  greeting  the  Judge,  Kilworth 
looked  up  from  his  interest  book  gloomily,  then 
took  the  Judge  into  the  back  room  of  the  bank 
and  gave  him  the  bank's  third  degree  for  delin 
quents.  He  had  heard  Kilworth  give  others  that 
third  degree ;  but  it  was  a  new  thing  to  the  Judge 
to  hear  it  visited  on  his  own  head.  It  rumpled  his 
white  vest,  disheveled  his  hair,  and  disorganised 
his  fundamental  faith  in  the  essential  goodness  of 
great  riches,  as  such.  And  that  faith  was  all  he 


THE  GODS  ARRIVE  255 

had  left  in  a  shattered  universe  whereon  to  pin 
his  sanity. 

The  congressman  left  Boyce  Kilworth's  bank 
dazed,  like  a  new  soul  in  purgatory.  That  the 
dogs  in  the  hustings  might  turn  on  him,  he  had 
come  to  believe,  was  largely  to  his  credit.  He  ac 
counted  it  a  virtue  that  he  had  been  picked  for  a 
high  martyrdom  to  his  principles.  Greece  and 
Rome  furnished  countless  examples  of  the  treach 
ery  of  the  rabble.  But  that  Boyce  Kilworth,  who 
was  of  the  divine  cult  and  of  a  divinity  of  pure 
gold  higher  than  that  in  which  mere  congressmen 
moved,  that  Boyce  Kilworth  should  snarl  at  his 
friend  and  should  bicker  at  the  defeat,  that 
he  should  find  Boyce  Kilworth's  gilding  rubbing 
off  and  disclosing  brass  —  that  indeed  was  real 
disillusion. 

But  his  faith  in  the  political  immortality  of  the 
demi-gods  of  his  Parnassus  was  unshaken.  He 
knew  in  his  soul  that  Boyce  Kilworth's  tin  mill 
would  shrivel  under  the  blighting  curse  of  the  jeal 
ous  divinities  if  there  was  no  Ladgett  in  Washing 
ton  to  intercede  for  the  mill ;  and,  though  he  was 
pained  —  even  deeply  hurt  —  at  the  ingratitude 
of  Kilworth,  still,  he  knew  that  in  the  order  of 


256  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

things  in  his  universe  Kilworth  would  be  brought 
to  see  his  error  and  retrace  his  steps. 

Yet,  as  the  Judge  turned  out  of  Constitution 
Street  into  a  shady  elm-covered  avenue  and  walked 
sadly  to  the  Astor  House  —  not  the  best  hotel  in 
New  Raynham  by  any  means,  but  one  where  for 
many  years  he  had  been  welcome  without  money 
and  without  price  for  the  glory  that  he  shed 
there  —  as  he  walked  he  wondered  and  wondered 
and  wondered  at  the  perfidy  of  the  gods,  which 
was  so  uncomfortably  like  the  baseness  of  man! 
Only  in  the  mad  tragedies  of  Euripides  could  he 
find  any  counterpart  of  this  baseness  of  the  di 
vinities,  such  as  he  had  seen  in  Kilworth. 

He  hesitated  to  go  to  Mrs.  Ladgett,  who  had 
packed  him  up  and  sent  him  to  Constitution  Street 
as  a  Spartan  mother  might  throw  her  offspring  on 
the  rocks.  So  he  gave  audience  first  to  Hiram 
Larson,  the  cup-bearer.  In  a  little  cubby-hole  be 
hind  the  high  pine  desk,  whereon  rested  the  dog 
eared  hotel  register,  Ladgett  and  his  lieutenant 
retired  as  to  a  sibylline  cave;  and  there  the  con 
gressman  gave  out  this  oracle : 

"  Hiram,  have  I  or  have  I  not  deserved  of  the 
Fates  a  kindlier  portion  than  they  have  dealt  me  ?  " 


THE  GODS  ARRIVE  257 

He  put  one  hand  behind  him,  pointed  an  orator 
ical  finger  at  the  lank  hotel  keeper,  wrinkled  his 
mottled  pink  brow  until  his  eyebrows  all  but  met, 
and  glared  at  Hiram  as  though  he  was  one  of  the 
Fates;  and  then  the  congressman  proceeded  to 
break  the  dam  of  his  restraint: 

"  Hiram,  boy  and  man  for  sixty-five  years  my 
goings  in  and  comings  .out  have  been  an  open  book. 
Did  I  desire  an  education?  Yes.  Well,  who 
paid  for  it?  Who?  I  ask.  Joel  Ladgett  taught 
school  and  paid  for  it ;  and  none  of  your  flimsy  fads 
and  frills  were  in  that  education.  Greek  —  hard 
beautiful  Greek  —  and  elegant  Latin,  and  deep 
mathematics,  and  subtle  philosophy.  And  when  I 
came  home  and  studied  law  here  in  Old  Man  Her- 
rington's  law  office,  I  ask  you,  who  was  the  young 
est  county  attorney  ever  elected  in  Lincoln  County? 
Who  ?  Well,  I  was.  I  was ! 

"  And  who  was  it  that  stood  by  Boyce  Kilworth 
in  the  county  attorney's  office  when  they  were  clam 
ouring  to  send  him  to  the  penitentiary  for  stuffing 
the  ballot  box?  You  know!  You  know!  And 
who,  as  district  judge  of  a  district  as  large  as  a 
New  England  State  —  who  shielded  Boyce  Kil 
worth  from  the  clamour  of  the  mob  that  would 


258  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

have  sent  him  up  for  fee  grabbing  as  county  treas 
urer,  if  it  was  not  I  myself?  I  defy  you  or  any 
other  man  to  tell  me  who  it  was !  " 

The  Judge  was  strutting  up  and  down  the  little 
cave  of  a  room,  with  his  hands  in  his  trousers 
pockets,  wagging  his  head  vigorously  in  his  best 
manner,  defying  some  hypothetical  adversary. 

'  When  I  went  into  politics,"  he  began  again, 
taking  a  new  tack,  "  I  knew  the  game.  I  knew  one 
must  rise  by  his  own  efforts  —  and  I  rose.  It  was 
my  business  to  rise  and  I  kept  rising.  I  made  one 
office  get  me  another.  And  no  other  man  in  this 
State  ever  played  a  smoother  game  than  I  played 
—  if  I  do  say  it  They  were  my  own  offices.  No 
man  can  say  he  ever  made  Joel  Ladgett.  Joel 
Ladgett  had  no  faith  in  the  rabble ;  he  didn't  fool 
himself  into  thinking  the  rabble  would  appreciate 
what  he  did.  He  didn't  fawn  on  'em  and  pretend 
he  was  in  office  to  serve  'em. 

"  Joel  Ladgett,  Hiram  Larson,  was  in  office  to 
rise,  and  keep  rising;  and  now,  when  the  Huns 
and  Vandals  come,  overwhelming  the  city,  Joel 
Ladgett  does  not  propose  to  run.  Joel  Ladgett 
will  sit  on  the  porch  of  his  house  in  his  vestments 
of  office  —  a  Roman  noble,  garbed  in  all  the  in- 


THE  GODS  ARRIVE  259 

signia  of  his  rank.  And  let  the  Goths  do  their 
worst!  " 

That  figure  pleased  him.  And,  though  there 
was  much  more  of  his  speech  to  Hiram,  the  cup 
bearer,  that  day,  his  picture  of  himself  grandly 
sitting  under  the  marble  pillars  of  a  decaying  re 
public  while  the  barbarians  ravaged  his  country,  so 
gripped  the  Judge's  imagination  that  he  resolved 
never  to  appear  on  Constitution  Street  without  his 
white  vest  and  the  carnation  at  his  coat  lapel,  which 
marked  his  high  calling  as  a  Roman  patriarch. 

It  was  while  the  Judge  was  ruminating  thus  in 
silence  amid  the  debris  of  our  institutions  that 
Hiram  mysteriously  beckoned  the  waiting  Mrs. 
Ladgett  into  the  darkness  of  a  linen  closet  and  con 
fided  to  her,  in  a  high-pressure  whisper,  that  the 
Situation  was  becoming  "  acute." 

The  day  following  Judge  Ladgett's  interview 
with  Boyce  Kilworth  the  banker  sent  his  wife  round 
to  call  on  Mrs.  Ladgett.  And  the  call  roiled  the 
waters  of  Mrs.  Ladgett's  soul.  For  of  old  it  was 
known  in  the  town  that  whenever  Boyce  Kilworth 
had  reason  to  hate  himself  for  a  particularly  des 
picable  trick  it  was  his  practice  to  send  his  meek, 
soft-voiced  wife  to  call  on  the  victim. 


260  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

She  was  known  as  Boyce's  First  Aid  —  not  that 
she  aided  in  any  sense.  It  was  her  habit  to  chirp 
naively  through  her  call  about  nothing  at  all,  and 
to  get  up  and  leave  a  whole  pack  of  cards  rather 
shyly;  then  fly  happily  away  on  the  next  errand  of 
mercy  to  deposit  her  peace  tablets  elsewhere. 
When  she  called  on  Mrs.  Ladgett,  at  the  Astor 
House,  Mrs.  Kilworth  sat  with  her  gloved  hands 
carefully  folded  in  her  lap  and  listened  meekly 
to  the  unctuous  patronge  of  the  grand  dame. 

"  Of  course,  Mrs.  Kilworth,"  quoth  the  consort, 
sitting  bolt  upright  in  purple  satin,  and  with  all  her 
false  hair  set  on  her  wrinkled  front,  giving  her  the 
appearance  of  an  animated  heathen  temple  — "  of 
course,  Mrs.  Kilworth,  you  cannot  understand  that 
they  have  let  in  chaos  at  Washington.  It  is  not 
only  the  Judge  they  have  retired  —  temporarily, 
of  course  —  but  the  other  strong  men  of  the 
House ;  the  government,  in  fact.  The  government 
has  fallen  —  only  a  shell  remains." 

Mrs.  Kilworth  smiled  up  sweetly  from  under  her 
white  hair,  falling  in  gentle  waves  on  her  placid 
forehead,  and  replied: 

"  Of  course  !     Isn't  it  unfortunate  ?  " 

"  Unfortunate !     Unfortunate !  "  rumbled  Mrs. 


THE  GODS  ARRIVE  261 

Ladgett.  u  Why,  woman  —  is  that  the  word  to 
use  about  the  fall  of  your  country?  I  have  just 
said  it  is  chaos  —  Chaos !  They  have  let  in 
chaos;  and  the  Judge  feels  it  a  patriotic  duty  to 
hurry  right  back  to  Washington  —  session  or  no 
session  —  to  do  what  he  can  to  prepare  the  coun 
try  against  its  ruin.  Ah,  madam  " —  this  with  a 
shake  of  the  head  that  set  the  temple  lights  of 
beads  on  the  lower  levels  to  trembling  as  in  an 
earthquake  — "  you  little  dream  what  it  means  to 
this  government  to  lose  the  guiding  hands  that 
have  kept  it  from  socialism  and  anarchy!  " 

But  the  time  had  come  when  the  impulse  to  de 
posit  her  cards  was  burning  unquenchably  in  Mrs. 
Kilworth,  and  she  rose  and  flitted  away,  carrying 
a  vague  impression  with  her  that  Mrs.  Ladgett  was 
booming  on  interminably.  And  ten  days  after  the 
primary,  when  the  Ladgetts  moved  majestically 
back  on  Washington,  Mrs.  Kilworth  had  a  curi 
ous  notion  that  they  were  going  back  to  do  some 
thing  or  other  to  chaos. 

It  was  a  beautiful  world  into  which  the  Ladgetts 
came  when  they  finally  returned  to  New  Raynham 
from  Washington  —  and  a  happy  world,  too,  as 
worlds  go.  Here  were  miles  of  wide,  elm-shaded 


262  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

streets,  and  hundreds  of  acres  of  bluegrass, 
whereon  children  pastured;  and  flowers  grew  in  lit 
tle  gardens  behind  comfortable  homes.  Youths 
and  maidens  met  and  played  the  little  comedies  of 
their  courtships  simply  and  gayly,  without  thought 
of  class  or  caste;  and  the  natural  selection  of  the 
human  creature  was  going  on  as  Utopians  for 
many  hopeless  ages  dreamed  it  should  go.  Riches 
were  distributed  more  fairly  than  ever  dreamers 
had  known  them  to  be  in  any  other  age  in  the 
world,  and  life  was  full  of  joy. 

If  they  had  but  looked  for  it  the  Ladgetts  could 
have  found  joy,  too,  in  seeing  the  flower  of  many  a 
world-old  dream  fruiting  so  sweetly.  But  the 
Judge  saw  only  the  wreck  of  the  order  on  which 
he  had  built  his  life's  faith;  and  the  Roman  matron 
who  stood  beside  him  saw  only  chaos.  Their  eyes 
were  focused  on  a  universe  running  wild;  and  they 
had  no  eyes  for  the  loving  hand  of  God,  which 
was  beckoning  through  all  the  streets,  through  all 
the  homes,  through  all  the  hearts  and  lives  of  the 
town,  to  an  age-long  human  vision  achieved  —  to 
a  glimpse  of  a  justice  that  might  some  day  be 
realised  by  all  men. 

So  it  was  a  hard,   hopeless,   dreary  sky  that 


THE  GODS  ARRIVE  263 

gloomed  over  the  Ladgetts  when  they  settled,  tem 
porarily,  of  course,  into  their  old  apartments  — 
two  bedrooms,  with  a  tin  bathtub  in  a  closet  be 
tween  them  —  in  the  Astor  House.  They  had  not 
accumulated  a  stick  of  furniture  during  their 
twenty  years  in  Congress,  and  the  New  Raynham 
home  that  they  had  built  in  the  seventies,  long  be 
fore  had  been  taken  for  its  mortgage  and  the 
taxes. 

However,  because  credits  in  the  stores  of  the 
town  were  easy  for  the  nobility,  and  the  Judge  kept 
the  flag  of  his  hopes  floating,  for  a  year  he  man 
aged  to  put  up  the  outward  show  of  prosperity. 
Always  the  white  vest,  the  tail  coat,  the  high  hat, 
the  red  carnation,  insignia  of  his  nobility;  always 
the  grand  manner  — r  even  in  buying  his  cigars  on 
credit;  always  the  air  that  the  author  of  the  Lad- 
gett  Bill  was  stooping  to  dwell  on  a  mortal  plane; 
always  the  atmosphere  of  the  grandeur  that  was 
Rome  — >  pervaded  him.  He  made  no  new 
friends;  when  he  came  out  of  his  lofty  dream  to 
speak  at  a  formal  occasion,  the  audience  was  made 
to  feel  that  the  author  of  the  Ladgett  Bill  was  still 
in  public  life. 

Hiram  Larson  always  had  been  his  campaign 


264  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

manager;  always  had  spoken  for  the  Judge,  trans 
lating  the  oracles  into  the  language  of  the  people. 
Hiram  continued  at  his  post;  and  the  Judge's 
casual  appearances  on  Constitution  Street  during 
his  first  year  of  exile  seemed  to  partake  something 
of  the  nature  of  a  pageant,  so  far  removed  was  he 
from  his  fellows. 

"  He  wears,"  said  Colonel  Longford  one  after 
noon  to  Toney  Delaney,  as  they  sat  in  the  back 
room  of  Boyce  Kilworth's  bank  watching  the 
Judge  out  skirmishing  for  a  cigar — "He  wears 
the  hue 

like  that  when  some  great  painter  dips 

His  pencil  in  the  gloom  of  earthquake  and  eclipse." 

11  'Tis  the  procession  of  the  bleedin'  heart,"  re 
turned  Delaney.  "  And  I  wonder,"  he  mused  on, 
"  whether  the  Judge  really  knows  it's  all  over  for 
him !  He  can't  come  back.  Why,  all  the  chief's 
money  here  wouldn't  galvanize  him !  And,  what's 
more,  the  chief's  tied  up  the  new  man  so  tight  he 
can't  breathe." 

The  miserly  drib  of  a  pension  which  the  Judge 
received  for  his  service  in  an  Indian  war  in  the 
late  sixties  Mrs.  Ladgett  appropriated  to  bedeck 


THE  GODS  ARRIVE  265 

herself  in  a  manner  befitting  her  station  as  wife  of 
the  author  of  the  Ladgett  Bill.  She  referred  to 
this  pension  as  "  our  income,"  and  precious  little 
did  Joel  get  to  apply  on  Hiram  Larson's  rising  ac 
count.  It  was  her  habit  to  commandeer  periodic 
ally  one  of  the  three  musty  hacks  in  the  town  and 
call  in  regal  pomp  on  such  official  families  as  she 
considered  required  calls  from  her. 

On  these  occasions  she  would  tell,  with  bated 
whispers,  of  the  responsibilities  at  Washington  that 
almost  broke  her  husband's  body  and  soul.  She 
was  careful  to  exhibit  an  indifferent  view  of  the 
senators,  a  nicely  restrained  contempt  for  the  Cabi 
net  Members,  and  to  withhold  her  loathing  of  the 
President's  general  incompetency  only  by  main 
strength  and  awkwardness.  But  for  Joel  Ladgett 
—  Mrs.  Ladgett  calmly  left  New  Raynham  to 
freeze  with  horror  at  the  thought  of  what  would 
have  happened  to  a  bleeding  country  if  it  had  not 
been  for  the  Judge. 

When  some  of  her  friends  suggested  that  she 
should  join  the  Woman's  Research  Club,  Mrs. 
Ladgett  rested  her  arms  proudly  over  her  ample 
fortifications  and  smiled  benignly  and  replied : 

"  I  shall  avail  myself  of  the  opportunity  to  visit 


266  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

your  club  — •  sometimes.  But  " —  here  she 
paused — "naturally  for  so  short  a  time  I  can 
scarcely  be  expected  to  take  an  active  part;  I  should 
hardly  get  into  next  year's  work  before  the  Judge 
would  no  longer  feel  the  need  of  the  rest  he  is  tak 
ing  and  would  be  back  in  the  harness  again  —  and 
we  shall  be  in  Washington." 

It  was  in  those  decadent  days  of  the  republic 
that  Mrs.  Ladgett  began  livening  up  the  interest 
in  her  Thursday  afternoons  by  telling  the  ladies  — 
mostly  oldish  ladies  of  an  unfashionable  cult  — 
of  the  temptations  that  beset  public  men  in  Wash 
ington.  Such  a  seamy  side  did  she  turn  to  the 
ladies;  such  dreadful  court  secrets  did  she  dis 
close;  such  an  insight  did  she  give  her  salon  into 
the  wicked  life  of  the  capital  —  that  Elsie  Barnes, 
the  society  editor  of  the  Globe,  once  said: 

"  Charley  " —  speaking  on  the  office  square  and 
under  the  Masonic  pledge  of  secrecy  which  that 
solemn  obligation  put  on  the  youth  before  her  — 
"  Charley,  if  I  could  just  get  the  right  to  publish 
what  she  reels  off  there  at  her  Thursday  after 
noons,  under  some  such  a  title  as  The  Secret 
Memoirs  of  a  Lady  Dragoness  in  the  Court  of 
Theodore  I,  I  could  make  our  fortunes." 


THE  GODS  ARRIVE  267 

It  was  not  Mrs.  Ladgett's  habit  to  paint  a  halo 
of  virtue  round  the  thin  hair  on  the  Judge's  pink 
head;  but  she  gave  the  strong  impression  that  she 
had  snatched  him  from  the  burning  pit  and  held 
him  spotless  only  by  her  own  splendid  qualities  of 
heart  and  mind.  She  was  not,  however,  the 
woman  to  say  so ! 

Thus,  as  the  Ladgetts'  first  year  away  from 
Washington  went  by,  the  town  said  that  the  drag- 
oness  was  getting  used  to  her  chains.  But  people 
did  not  know  how  fiercely  she  snapped  at  those 
chains.  It  was  in  January  following  their  return 
from  Washington  that  Mrs.  Ladgett  breathed  fire 
into  the  Judge's  soul  and  sent  him  out,  with  the 
weapon  of  his  trembling  hopes,  to  release  her  from 
her  captivity  and  take  her  to  the  heights  where  she 
was  wont  to  dwell. 

It  was  one  thing  to  buckle  on  the  Judge's  ar 
mour  and  send  him  valiantly  into  Constitution 
Street;  but,  alas,  it  was  quite  another  thing  for 
the  Judge  to  storm  and  retake  the  Kilworth  for 
tress.  As  the  Judge  went  into  the  marble  and  tiled 
splendour  of  the  outer  offices  he  clicked  his  heels 
as  gayly  as  he  could  —  for  one  whose  legs  seemed 
water  beneath  him  —  and  swung  as  jauntily  as  pos- 


268  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

sible  past  Boyce  Kilworth's  desk  into  the  back 
room,  where  all  the  dire  deeds  of  the  bank  were 
done.  In  a  few  moments  Kilworth  followed  the 
Judge  and  found  him  seated  at  the  table  where  in 
times  before  the  two  had  often  held  high  confer 
ence.  Kilworth  remained  standing.  He  held  his 
fountain  pen  impatiently  in  his  hand  and  asked 
quickly : 

"  Well,  Judge  ?" 

"  I  have  come,"  answered  Judge  Ladgett  —  try 
ing  vainly  to  get  back  into  the  old  imperious  man 
ner  that  came  to  him  naturally  as  a  member  of 
The  Committee  and  as  the  author  of  the  Ladgett 
Bill  — "  I  have  come,"  he  repeated,  to  get  a  good 
start,  "  to  talk  over  our  plans  for  my  campaign  — 
this  spring." 

"  That's  good  —  that's  good !  "  cut  in  Kilworth, 
still  holding  his  pen,  and  jingling  his  keys  and  his 
silver  with  his  other  hand  in  his  trousers  pocket. 
"  By  the  way,  what  are  you  running  for  now, 
Judge?" 

The  Judge  met  the  keen  black  eyes  of  the 
banker,  and  the  old  eyes  dropped.  Kilworth  felt 
that  the  worst  was  over.  The  Judge's  head  and 
eyes  came  up  in  a  moment  and  he  replied:  *  You 


THE  GODS  ARRIVE  269 

know  very  well  what  I'm  running  for,  sir !  What 
should  I  be  running  for  but  Congress?  " 

"  All  right,  Judge  —  go  ahead.  It's  a  free 
country.  But  I've  had  to  obligate  myself  to  the 
present  incumbent.  You  know  the  story  of  the 
appointment  of  the  new  United  States  marshal. 
I  had  to  have  him.  And,  anyway,  I'm  lined  up 
that  way  now,  Judge." 

Kilworth  put  the  least  shade  of  kindness  —  or 
maybe  it  was  self-pity  — •  into  the  last  sentence. 
He  stood  towering  over"  the  Judge  and  saw  sud 
denly  come  into  the  old  frame  a  stiffening  of  pur 
pose;  and  an  instant  later  the  Judge  was  on  his 
feet. 

"  And  you,"  cried  the  Judge  passionately,  "  you 
tie  up  " —  he  paused  and  repeated  — "  you  tie  up 
with  him !  With  him  ?  With  anarchy,  with  so 
cialism,  with  the  enemies  of  the  Constitution  — 
just  for  a  Federal  marshal  to  herd  round  your  serfs 
down  there  at  the  tin  plant  and  keep  'em  down! 
You  betray  your  country  for  a  piece  of  pie?" 
His  face  was  red  and  his  voice  charged  with  wrath. 
4  You  —  you  who  would  be  doing  your  time  still 
in  the  penitentiary  if  it  wasn't  for  me!  You! 
You!" 


270  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

He  was  glaring  at  the  banker  when  Kilworth 
sneered:  "Get  off  your  high  horse!  A  man's 
got  to  be  practical,  hasn't  he?  Anyway,  I'm 
busy." 

Kilworth  turned  to  go.  The  Judge's  passion 
was  waning  and  he  cried: 

"  Look  here,  Boyce;  can't  you  listen  to  reason? 
Does  a  stable  government  mean  nothing  to  you?  " 
He  stood  pleading  rather  pitifully  as  the  banker 
stopped  but  did  not  turn. 

Kilworth  answered  harshly: 

u  No  use  talking,  Judge;  I'm  all  tied  up.  I'm 
sorry;  but  I  can't  help  you." 

He  was  gone  a  moment  later.  The  Judge 
picked  up  his  hat  and  his  gloves  —  newly  cleaned, 
as  a  part  of  his  burnished  armour,  by  his  wife.  He 
stood  for  a  moment  looking  out  of  the  window,  and 
then  walked  through  Kilworth's  room  into  the  cor 
ridor  of  the  bank,  without  speaking,  and  with  what 
pride  he  could  rouse  from  a  broken  heart. 

He  countermarched  about  the  outside  of  the 
frowning  fortress  he  could  not  storm  and  made  a 
sad  detour  before  going  to  the  castle,  where  the 
pining  prisoner  lay  in  the  dungeon  of  the  Astor 
House.  He  talked  a  long  footless  hour  with 


THE  GODS  ARRIVE  271 

Hiram,  went  over  every  county  in  the  district,  post 
master  by  postmaster,  precinct  by  precinct,  town  by 
town;  but,  as  for  conclusions,  Hiram,  after  the 
manner  of  his  cult  and  caste,  had  few  to  offer. 
He  looked  wise,  made  certain  familiar  grimaces 
to  indicate  that  he  was  thinking  deeply,  and,  in  the 
end,  would  venture  nothing  more  definite  than  that 
the  Situation  seemed  very  grave  —  acute,  in  fact ! 
At  the  end  of  the  hour  the  defeated  knight  in  ar 
mour  shuffled  wearily  and  rather  stiffly,  in  the 
clotted  garments  of  his  downfall,  up  the  stairs  to 
break  the  news  to  the  captive  in  her  shackles. 
And  she  —  the  dragoness  —  alas !  when  she  took 
the  burnished  armour  off  her  knight,  being  wise  and 
exceedingly  kind  in  her  innermost  heart,  knew  full 
well  that  the  armour  never  could  go  on  again. 

PART  II 

The  Judge  tried  vainly  for  a  month  or  two  to 
rouse  some  enthusiasm  for  his  candidacy  in  the  dis 
trict.  Hiram  Larson  went  through  a  rather  pon 
derous  ritual  of  giving  out  interviews  to  the  ef 
fect  that  the  Judge  might  run  again  if  his  friends 
insisted.  One  or  two,  perhaps  altogether  half  a 
dozen,  patriots  in  post  offices  wrote  letters  to  the 


272  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

papers  demanding  that  the  Judge  should  run  and 
restore  the  government  of  the  fathers;  but  the 
movement  got  no  farther. 

And  in  the  spring  the  Judge  swung  a  new  tin 
lawyer's  sign  to  the  breeze.  He  moved  a  rickety 
old  walnut  desk  into  an  insurance  man's  shabby 
office,  upstairs  in  a  by-street,  and  took  up  the  prac 
tice  of  law;  but  he  had  not  been  on  his  feet  in  a 
courtroom  for  thirty  years.  The  law  had  grown 
away  from  him  and  his  youthful  practice  was  scat 
tered.  He  had  no  law  books,  and  the  whole  busi 
ness  of  law  had  changed  so  since  he  had  practised 
in  the  courts  that  he  was  sadly  adrift  in  it.  Rarely 
did  a  client  climb  his  stairs  —  except  the  old  sol 
diers  who  puffed  up,  with  their  tangled  pension 
cases,  which  he  was  supposed  to  untangle  free  of 
charge. 

A  rather  dreary  and  distinctly  dingy  life  lived 
this  little  tin  god,  forever  beleaguered  in  New 
Raynham.  For  a  time  he  wrote  letters  to  his 
grand  friends  in  Washington  and  kept  in  touch 
with  the  life  of  which  he  had  been  a  part;  but  their 
letters  to  him  grew  shorter,  and  sometimes  he  got 
form  letters,  which  he  knew  were  signed  and  — 
alas !  —  composed  by  their  clerks.  So  it  came  to 


THE  GODS  ARRIVE  273 

him  that  the  lost  Alsace  for  which  he  was  eating 
his  heart  out  was  a  vast  sham.  They  were  all 
frauds  down  there,  he  told  Hiram.  The  coming 
of  the  Gauls  had  sapped  their  courage  and  they 
were  truckling  to  the  mob. 

"  Are  they  blind?  "  he  would  demand  fiercely  of 
Hiram  on  hot  afternoons,  when  he  saw  no  reason 
for  inhabiting  his  dusty  office  and  having  to  live 
with  a  man  to  whom  he  owed  a  year's  office  rent  — 
"  are  they  blind  to  the  follies  that  wrought  the 
downfall  of  Greece  and  Rome?  Can't  they  see 
that  these  new  fads  are  old  perils?  What  are  all 
these  frills  of  popular  government  but  the  rise  of 
the  Grecian  demagogues?  And  these  low  abase 
ments  to  labour  —  what  are  they  but  the  soup 
kitchens  of  Rome  and  the  idiocy  of  the  agrarian 
movements  ?  Why  can't  men  read  history?  And 
why  do  we  forget  the  principles  of  the  fathers  and 
besot  ourselves  with  demagogy !  " 

And  Hiram,  in  his  wisdom,  would  pull  a  wry 
face  and  shake  a  doubtful,  silent  head  over  the 
grave  Situation. 

A  time  came  when  the  white  vest  had  lost  its 
pristine  splendour.  It  was  often  spotted  and 
poorly  cleaned  with  gasoline;  then  washed  in  the 


274  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

tin  bathtub  and  badly  ironed.  Money  was  so 
scarce  with  the  Ladgetts  that  a  dollar  became  a 
family  institution  before  it  was  spent.  It  was 
known  as  "  that  dollar,"  and  then  as  "  that 
quarter  " —  and  finally,  "  that  nickel." 

The  Retailers'  Association  —  another  of  those 
modern  devices  that  were  bleeding  the  noblest 
blood  of  New  Raynham  white  by  making  the  no 
bility  pay  cash  —  had  entered  the  Ladgetts  in 
their  fraud  book.  They  were  marked  FFz;  and 
when  the  Judge  desired  to  smoke  he  had  to  saunter 
behind  the  counter  in  the  office  of  the  Astor  House 
—  sometimes  when  Hiram  was  there  and  the 
Situation  was  grave,  and  sometimes  when  he  was 
not  there  and  the  Situation  was  less  acute  —  and 
take  a  cigar.  No  Constitution  Street  store  would 
sell  to  the  Judge  without  the  cash.  The  business 
of  being  a  Roman  lictor  and  staring  the  Gauls  out 
of  countenance,  or  of  dying  that  France  might 
live,  was  a  sad  and  discouraging  business. 

Sometimes  —  perhaps  on  circus  days,  or  when 
lodge  conventions  were  meeting  in  the  town,  or 
when  a  club  or  society  was  filling  the  Astor  House 
for  a  few  brief  hours  —  the  Judge,  as  a  creature 
of  some  higher  order  among  mortals,  would  ap- 


THE  GODS  ARRIVE  275 

pear  behind  the  counter  in  the  office,  obviously 
stooping  to  the  lower  classes  as  Alfred  ate  the  oat 
loaf,  and  would  assign  guests  to  their  rooms; 
take  their  money  with  conspicuous  playfulness ;  or 
in  something  like  the  manner  of  a  dancing  elephant 
he  would  even  take  ice  water  to  their  rooms  or 
bow  them  into  the  dining  room. 

It  had  been  over  a  year  since  Mrs.  Ladgett  had 
begun  to  help  Mrs.  Larson  in  the  kitchen  at  rush 
times  and  to  slip  into  the  bedrooms  on  her  floor, 
making  the  beds,  half  surreptitiously,  half  apolo 
getically  —  like  some  grand  griffin  caught  violat 
ing  a  garbage  can ! 

When  he  went  to  the  newspaper  office  in  the  aft 
ernoons  to  get  the  news  of  the  day  the  Judge  was 
still  able  to  rise  to  his  heights  —  to  the  real  Par 
nassus,  where  he  had  shone  with  the  glittering  di 
vinities.  Our  Press  report  is  a  pony  report  of  only 
three  thousand  words  —  a  dignified  bulletin  serv 
ice  ;  but  still  a  bulletin  service.  At  first  the  Judge 
used  to  sit  by  the  pale  youth  who  edited  the  briefed 
copy  that  came  from  the  telegraph  instrument,  and 
trust  —  with  the  wistful  eyes  of  a  hungry  dog  — 
to  the  young  man's  dropping  a  skin  or  a  bone  of 
news  from  the  scant  feast  we  were  enjoying. 


276  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

A  line  from  Washington  meant  so  much  to  the 
Judge  that  he  had  to  share  it  with  the  youth  at  the 
desk.  And  when  the  Judge  expanded  the  inner 
meaning  of  the  line,  it  was  the  habit  of  the  youth 
to  write  out  what  the  Judge  had  said  and  share  the 
wider  knowledge  with  the  readers  of  the  paper. 
So  it  happened  that  the  Judge  became  an  office  in 
stitution. 

One  afternoon  the  story  came  across  the  young 
man's  desk  of  the  overthrow  of  the  regulars  in  the 
National  House  of  Representatives.  They  were 
the  cohorts  of  the  Judge's  own  Roman  legion,  and 
the  Speaker  was  their  proconsul.  It  was  a  meagre 
story  as  it  came,  rather  undramatic  and  colourless; 
but  when  the  Judge  visualised  it,  and  the  pale 
youth  had  written  it,  he  pictured  the  determined, 
white-visaged  regulars  huddled  in  a  corner  of  the 
House  like  fighting  rats,  with  the  cowardly  ma 
jority  hectoring  the  intrepid  minority,  and  with  the 
blood  of  the  martyrs  coursing  through  their  hearts. 

The  Judge  saw,  and  he  made  the  youth  at  the 
desk  see  in  spite  of  himself,  the  fine  fettle  and  gor 
geous  pluck  of  the  little  band  that  rallied  about 
the  great  proconsul,  who  was  beaten  down  and 
overwhelmed. 


THE  GODS  ARRIVE  277 

When  the  youth  had  finished  writing  the  story, 
however,  he  looked  up  and  saw  the  Judge  still 
holding  the  original  yellow  sheet  from  the  tele 
graph  instrument  in  his  trembling  hands.  Tear 
stains  smudged  the  mottled,  unshaved  old  face; 
and  as  the  Judge  met  the  young  eyes  the  husky  old 
voice  spoke: 

"  Oh,  my  Leonidas  —  my  fallen  Leonidas ! 
How  long  shall  we  wait  for  some  Thermopylae 
to  make  thy  death  immortal?  " 

Whereupon  he  rose,  snapped  his  spectacles  into 
their  case,  and  toddled  out  of  the  office.  He  came 
back  the  next  morning  bright  and  early  to  get  a 
look  at  the  morning  papers ;  but  his  heart  was  never 
the  same  after  the  overthrow  of  the  Speaker. 
He  never  smiled  again  on  politics.  He  looked  out 
on  the  world  round  him  as  one  from  a  fortified 
citadel  looks  into  a  captive  plain  filled  with  the 
dead,  the  mad  and  the  invaders. 

Little  by  little,  as  this  creed  or  that  theory  had 
been  enacted  into  law,  or  had  been  made  a  part 
of  the  common  life  of  the  people  about  him,  his 
cronies  in  Washington  had  accepted  the  new  order 
established  and  had  taken  to  worshipping  it  as  a 
part  of  the  fixed  destiny  of  the  race.  But  the 


278  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

Judge  never  surrendered.  At  evening  he  saw  the 
sun  setting  in  his  country's  blood,  and  at  dawn  he 
watched  for  the  invasion  of  the  Parthians  and  Van 
dals  of  a  heathen  democracy. 

The  time  came  when  he  could  no  longer  pre 
tend  to  have  a  law  office.  The  insurance  man, 
who  had  borne  with  him  for  years  without  rent, 
finally  moved  to  a  smaller  office  to  get  rid  of  the 
Judge;  so  he  took  to  spending  more  and  more 
time  in  the  newspaper  office.  We  gave  him  a  chair 
at  a  desk  where  the  exchanges  were  tumbled ;  and, 
because  he  liked  to  have  the  papers  as  quickly  as 
the  mails  brought  them,  we  gave  him  a  leather 
pouch  and  made  it  a  part  of  his  duty  to  go  for  the 
mails.  He  used  to  shuffle  moodily  along  the  streets 
in  his  frayed  coat,  shiny  trousers  and  dirty  white 
vest,  head  down,  brooding  over  the  wrongs  of  the 
republic.  Coming  back  to  his  chair,  he  would  sit 
for  hours  browsing  through  the  newspapers,  tak 
ing  a  kind  of  fiendish  pleasure  in  torturing  himself 
with  the  radical  papers,  gloating  terribly  as  he  read 
the  socialist  press,  and  mortifying  his  flesh  with 
an  occasional  anarchist  weekly. 

Patriotism  with  the  Judge  was  a  primal  emo- 


THE  GODS  ARRIVE  279 

tion.  And  to  him  patriotism  meant  the  order  that 
was  —  the  good  old  times;  the  Constitution  of  the 
Fathers;  the  divine  right  of  capital  to  rule.  As 
he  hated  kings,  so  he  hated  democracy;  and  the 
rising  intelligence  of  the  middle  classes,  which  de 
manded  recognition  in  the  government,  seemed  to 
the  Judge  the  return  of  the  jungle  into  a  well-or 
dered  garden  of  life. 

So,  when  his  state  gave  the  ballot  to  women, 
Caesar's  great  heart  broke.  The  Judge  had  tried 
to  make  some  speeches  against  it,  but  the  rabble 
hooted  him,  and  the  fund  to  pay  his  expenses  was 
meagre ;  so,  early  in  the  campaign  he  came  home  to 
view  with  what  equanimity  he  could  muster  the 
wreck  of  matter  and  the  crash  of  worlds.  For  a 
week  after  the  election  he  kept  off  the  streets. 
Then  one  day  he  toddled  to  the  newspaper  office 
and  picked  up  —  not  the  goading  journals  that  had 
excited  his  wrath  before  the  fall  of  man,  but,  in 
stead,  he  reached  for  an  old  reliable,  safe  and 
sane  organ  of  the  Bourbons,  which  had  been  his 
strength  in  ages  past. 

The  Judge  felt  that  there  was  a  firm  rock  to 
which  he  could  cling;  but  he  forgot  —  if  he  ever 


28o  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

knew  —  that  newspapers  find  their  way  into  homes 
largely  on  the  woman's  dictum,  and  that  editors  — 
even  Bourbon  editors  —  are  quick  to  observe  on 
which  side  their  bread  is  buttered.  So,  in  running 
down  the  editorial  column  of  the  paper  that  he  had 
come  to  regard  as  the  last  palladium  of  his  liber 
ties,  the  Judge's  eye  found  this : 

"  And  what  steam,  electricity  and  capital  did 
for  the  material  development  of  the  nineteenth  cen 
tury,  we  may  expect  the  conscience  of  an  enlight 
ened  womanhood  to  do  for  the  spiritual  advance 
ment  that  is  before  us  as  our  problem  in  the  es 
tablishment  of  justice  in  the  twentieth  century." 

Slowly  he  put  the  poison  from  his  quivering  lips. 
He  folded  the  sheet  carefully  and  sat  looking 
dazed  and  helpless  as  he  struggled  impotently  with 
the  shame  and  rage  that  crackled  within  him.  The 
busy  young  men  in  the  room  clicked  away  at  their 
typewriters;  and  the  telegraph  instrument  chirped 
its  song  —  a  cricket  on  the  hearth  of  the  planet 
Only  the  society  editor  in  the  next  room,  holding 
her  hands  in  puzzled  anxiety,  trying  to  recall 
whether  Mrs.  Gregory  Nixon  had  worn  her  black 
velvet  or  her  orange  satin  at  her  dinner  the  night 


THE  GODS  ARRIVE  281 

before  —  only  Elsie  Barnes  could  see  the  emo 
tional  tumult  that  was  shattering  the  old  man's 
heart.  And  even  she  did  not  appreciate  how 
deeply  he  was  stirred.  Suddenly  he  rose,  as 
though  addressing  some  specter  chairman,  and 
cried: 

"  Conscience,  gentlemen!  Justice,  gentlemen! 
Spiritual  advancement,  gentlemen!  My  God! 
Oh,  my  God !  Are  these  things  to  be  dragged  in 
the  mire  of  politics?  Lord!  Lord!  Has  reason 
fled  to  brutish  beasts?  " 

The  young  men  looked  up,  startled,  from  their 
machines.  But  the  old  man,  like  Pontius  Pilate 
after  asking  his  fateful  question,  did  not  wait  for 
the  answer,  but  shuffled  out  of  the  room. 

At  the  general  election  following  the  victory  of 
the  women,  New  Raynham  was  stirred  to  its 
depths;  matters  of  vast  moment  were  involved  in 
the  election  of  a  county  commissioner,  and  inci 
dentally  a  President,  a  congressman  and  a  state 
ticket.  So  lines  in  the  town  were  taut. 

A  week  before  the  registration  books  closed  it 
was  found  that  the  Judge  had  not  registered. 
Somebody  spoke  to  Hiram  Larson  about  the 
Judge's  oversight  and  Hiram  passed  the  word  on 


282  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

to  the  Judge,  who  nodded  and  said  nothing.  Four 
days  passed  and  still  the  Judge  had  not  enrolled  as 
a  voter.  The  women  had  enrolled  Mrs.  Ladgett 
early  in  the  campaign.  Hiram  again  reminded  the 
Judge  that  his  name  was  not  on  the  books,  and 
again  the  Judge  nodded. 

On  the  seventh  day  Hiram  and  Toney  Delaney 
and  Colonel  Longford,  as  a  board  of  strategy, 
took  charge  of  the  Judge.  It  was  late  in  the  after 
noon  when  the  Colonel  had  laboriously  and  rather 
deviously  herded  and  manoeuvred  the  Judge  to  a 
point  where  the  two  stood  in  front  of  the  city  hall 
and  the  Colonel  remarked  casually: 

"  Better  step  in  and  register,  Judge !  "  And 
he  offered  Judge  Ladgett  a  cigar. 

The  backs  of  many  women  who  were  registering 
at  the  last  hour  were  seen  through  the  open  win 
dow  and  the  shrill  rasp  of  female  voices  tore  the 
Judge's  nerves. 

"  Look  in  there  — •  just  look  in  there,  Jack  Long 
ford  1  A  pink  tea  party  —  a  bridge-whist  joint  — 
a  miserable  millinery  opening!  No,  Jack  —  no! 
You  may  do  it;  you  may  sully  your  manhood  by 
voting  with  that  shejbedlam  —  that  —  that  — " 

He  could  not  finish  the  sentence,  but  choked  in 


THE  GODS  ARRIVE  283 

emotion,  and  took  the  Colonel's  arm  and  tried  to 
move  away.  But  the  Colonel  was  obdurate.  He 
held  the  Judge  and  cried: 

"  But,  Joel  —  Joel,  my  boy  —  your  vote?  Your 
vote?" 

The  two  old  men  stood  looking  vainly  into  each 
other's  eyes  —  the  Colonel  pleading;  the  Judge  in 
wrath  and  shame  that  shook  his  head  as  in  a  palsy. 
It  was  the  Judge  who  found  voice;  but  his  voice 
was  cracked  with  rage  as  he  shook  his  old  head  in 
defiance. 

"  Vote  1  Vote !  "  he  repeated.  "  What's  one 
honest  vote  more  or  less  in  a  madhouse?  Jack, 
I've  cast  my  last  vote !  " 

He  turned  sharply,  broke  away  from  the  Colo 
nel  and  stalked  down  the  street  alone,  with  what 
dignity  his  years  would  grant  him  on  his  unsure 
feet.  A  moment  later  Hiram  and  Toney  Delaney 
appeared  from  round  a  corner,  where  they  had 
been  in  waiting;  and  the  Colonel,  pointing  to  the 
wrathy,  shuffling  little  figure  trudging  down  the 
street,  turned  a  sad  face  skyward  and  bellowed  his 
emotions  in  his  fine  old  voice : 

"  For  God's  sake,  let  us  sit  upon  the  ground 
And  tell  sad  stories  of  the  death  of  kings" 


284  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

Toney  Delaney  did  not  laugh  —  for  once  in  his 
life;  but  Hiram,  nodding  his  head  like  a  mechan 
ical  toy,  and  then  shaking  it,  scowled  and  admitted, 
as  one  keeping  back  the  meat  of  the  truth  and  cast 
ing  out  a  bone : 

"  Colonel  " —  Hiram  paused — "  Colonel,  the 
Situation  is  certainly  grave!  " 

The  passing  years  were  taking  the  Judge  into 
his  early  seventies,  trimming  the  sagging  paunch 
that  held  his  little  round  stomach,  cutting  away  the 
fat  from  his  jowls,  deepening  the  wrinkles  in  his 
forehead.  He  came  to  have  a  lean,  frowsy  look, 
more  or  less  unshaved;  waxy  as  to  skin  and  red 
as  to  eyelids. 

The  year  that  saw  a  tide  of  reaction  registered 
in  the  elections  found  the  Judge  scarcely  able  to 
muster  a  decent-looking  suit  of  clothes  for  the  ban 
quet  that  the  Old  Guard  held  in  the  grandest  hotel 
in  New  Raynham.  Not  that  there  was  much  to 
celebrate  in  the  way  of  results  achieved  in  his  state ; 
for  there  popular  clamour  still  held  the  man  who 
had  the  loaves  and  fishes  to  distribute,  and  there 
was  no  hope  for  the  Judge  from  those  who  lent  an 
ear  to  popular  clamour.  But  in  other  states  the 
outlook  was  better.  Some  of  his  old  congressional 


THE  GODS  ARRIVE  285 

colleagues  were  slipping  back  into  governorships; 
and  one  who  had  served  with  the  Judge  on  The 
Committee  was  the  orator  of  the  day  at  the  Old 
Guard's  celebration. 

So  the  Judge,  in  his  frayed  garments,  from 
which  the  nap  had  long  since  been  brushed;  in  his 
freshly  washed  white  vest,  all  tucked  in  at  the  back 
to  fit  his  shrinking  paunch;  with  his  hair  cut  — 
a  new  hair-cut  of  great  price,  namely,  a  quarter  — 
showing  the  two  lean  arteries  at  the  back  of  his 
neck,  the  Judge  came  home  from  the  banquet  a 
giant  refreshed. 

The  plan  to  name  and  elect  one  of  the  Judge's 
old  cronies  as  President,  and  restore  forever  the 
order  that  was,  put  iron  into  the  old  soul  of  the 
broken  demi-god ;  for  a  President  could  scatter  the 
powers  of  darkness  and  bring  back  the  days  of 
duties,  specific  and  ad  valorem  —  wherein  con 
gressmen  and  tinmakers  walked  together  in  maj 
esty  on  the  heights.  It  was  a  beautiful  vision,  and 
it  warmed  the  Judge's  old  heart  to  a  recrudescence 
of  youth.  He  had  agreed  to  raise  his  county's 
share  of  the  campaign  fund  that  was  to  be  used  as 
a  sinew  of  war  in  the  state  to  fight  against  the  hated 
Parthians  of  popular  clamour. 


286  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

For  a  day  or  two  after  the  Feast  of  Belshazzar 
he  sat  pondering  at  his  desk  in  the  exchange  room 
of  the  newspaper  office,  writing  down  names,  as 
sessing  tentative  sums  after  the  names,  and  build 
ing  vain  castles  of  power  and  glory  on  the  hopes 
he  had  of  making  his  assessments  a  reality.  Then 
for  a  day  or  two  the  place  that  knew  the  Judge 
knew  him  only  intermittently.  The  reporters 
brought  in  the  news  that  he  was  out  collecting; 
they  also  declared  that  he  was  not  collecting  much. 
And  even  Boyce  Kilworth  seemed  to  be  turning  an 
ear  to  popular  clamour  and  gave  the  Judge  a  dol 
lar  where  he  had  expected  to  get  a  hundred. 

A  week  passed;  we  heard  the  Judge  rattling  two 
dollars  against  a  third  as  he  sat  at  his  desk  in  the 
office,  and  one  morning  he  toddled  in  unsteadily,  a 
trifle  late.  It  was  the  morning  when  the  state  con 
vention  of  the  Woman's  Federation  was  gathering 
in  the  town.  He  seemed  feeble  and  preoccupied. 
He  went  over  and  over  his  assessment  list  and  was 
forever  looking  up  to  see  who  entered  the  office. 

An  hour  before  the  noon  mails  were  due  he 
walked  cautiously  to  the  business  office,  put  down 
three  silver  dollars  and  a  ten-dollar  bill,  and  asked 
the  man  at  the  counter  to  get  him  a  draft  for  thir- 


THE  GODS  ARRIVE  287 

teen  dollars,  payable  to  the  treasurer  of  the  Con 
stitutional  Club,  at  the  Capital.  In  due  course 
he  wrote  his  letter,  inclosed  his  draft  and  went  to 
the  post  office  to  wait  for  the  mail. 

While  he  was  gone  Hiram  Larson  came  into  the 
office  looking  for  the  Judge.  Hiram  explained 
rather  foolishly  that  a  ten-dollar  bill  had  dropped 
out  of  his  counter  drawer  on  the  floor  of  the  of 
fice  that  morning  and  he  was  wondering  whether 
the  Judge  had  seen  it.  Hiram  wrote  out  a  "  lost  " 
advertisement  and  left  it,  saying: 

"  Tell  the  Judge,  if  he  hasn't  seen  it,  to  have 
this  put  in  the  paper.  You  know  there's  a  chance 
that  the  bill  may  have  been  swept  out  under  some 
of  the  petticoats  onto  the  sidewalk,  and  somebody 
might  have  picked  it  up ;  for  I  know  it  was  there  at 
half  past  nine  —  I  counted  the  cash  myself  then. 
And,  of  course,  the  Judge  may  have  picked  it  up 
and  put  it  somewhere  —  there's  that." 

After  Hiram  had  gone,  the  Judge  came  sifting 
in.  His  leather  pouch  was  stuffed  with  papers 
and  in  his  fingers  he  held  a  letter.  Before  he 
could  open  the  letter,  the  editor  handed  the  old 
man  the  advertisement.  He  flushed  when  he  read 
it  and  shook  his  head,  and  the  advertisement  took 


288  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

its  course.  Then  he  opened  his  letter.  It  was 
from  his  friend  and  former  colleague  on  The  Com 
mittee,  who,  as  orator  of  the  day,  had  met  the 
Judge  at  the  rally  of  the  Old  Guards. 

The  letter  was  written  on  the  embossed  station 
ery  of  the  state  — >  a  rich  state,  lying  to  the  east 
ward.  It  began  affectionately:  "Dear  old 
Joe !  "  and  indicated  between  the  lines  that  the 
heart  of  the  man  who  had  spoken  at  the  Old 
Guards'  rally  had  been  touched  by  the  faded, 
broken  figure  who  had  edged  about  the  crowd  at 
the  banquet.  The  letter  closed  with  these  words : 

"  And  now,  my  dear  Joe,  here  is  something  I  can 
do  for  you :  I  have  a  contingent  fund  voted  by 
the  legislature  to  defend  the  various  measures  of 
popular  government  recently  passed  by  our  people 
at  the  polls  from  certain  attacks  in  the  courts.  I 
find  I  can  appropriate  five  hundred  dollars  of  this 
sum  to  you  for  associating  with  the  attorneys  of 
this  state.  See  inclosed  sheet  for  specific  suits.  I 
realise  that  you  don't  altogether  agree  with  the 
spirit  of  these  new  measures;  but  a  lawyer  must 
take  whatever  business  comes  to  his  office."  And 
then,  after  a  few  personal  words,  the  letter  closed. 

Judge  Joel  Ladgett  sat  before  the  unopened  ex- 


THE  GODS  ARRIVE  289 

changes  for  a  long  time.  His  hands  were  clasped 
and  his  thin  little  body  swayed  as  in  a  breeze. 
He  rose  and  looked  out  of  the  window,  and  read 
and  reread  the  letter.  Then  he  moved  unsteadily 
over  to  the  desk  of  the  editor  and  put  the  letter 
before  him  without  a  word.  When  he  had  read 
the  letter  the  editor  reached  out  and  grasped  the 
Judge's  hand,  crying : 

"  Fine,  Judge!     Fine!" 

But  when  the  editor  looked  up  into  the  waxy  old 
face  he  found  it  cast  into  a  determined  mould, 
which  was  half  stare  and  half  a  self-deprecatory 
smile.  The  Judge  stood  in  silent  embarrassment 
a  moment,  then  spoke  in  a  cracked,  overstrained 
voice : 

"No  —  no  —  no !  I  tell  you,  Archimedes  — 
don't  you  see  I  can't  do  it?  " 

The  inner  storm  in  his  heart  was  playing  in  heat 
lightning  twitches  across  the  wrinkled  face ;  but  the 
high,  overstrained  voice  answered  its  own  ques 
tion,  while  the  self-deprecatory  smile  held  its  place 
through  the  storm: 

"  Why,  man,  can't  you  see?  I  can't  surrender 
— not  now  —  not  now,  Archimedes."  He  was 
weaving  slightly;  and  he  grasped  the  desk  with  his 


290  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

bony,  veinous  hands  as  he  went  on  in  the  same 
tense,  unnatural  voice:  "  I'll  not  pull  down  my 
flag  now,  after  —  after  — " 

He  gathered  strength  from  outside  himself  and 
found  his  natural  voice,  to  say  very  slowly  and 
cautiously,  as  one  picking  his  way  through  flashes 
of  light: 

"  I  have  begged  for  this  cause,  man !  I  have 
had  to  lie  for  this  cause.  I  may  yet  —  I  may  —  I 
—  well,  I  could  steal  for  it  if  I  had  to;  but,  with 
the  help  of  all  the  high  gods,  I'll  not  sell  it  out  — 
I'll  not  sell  it  out  for  money !  " 

His  voice  broke  in  a  little  senile  scream.  The 
heat  lightning  on  his  face  was  a  sheet  of  emotion 
and  his  trembling  hands  shook  the  desk.  In  a 
moment  the  storm  subsided,  for  age  does  not  long 
sustain  its  passions.  An  instant  later  he  cried  in 
triumph,  as  though  to  some  invisible  gallery : 

"  No  —  no !  l  My  head  is  bloody,  but  un 
bowed!'" 

He  was  proud  of  his  quotation,  and  his  pride 
held  back  for  a  moment  the  reaction  of  grief  in  his 
soul.  He  may  have  felt  it  coming,  for  he  turned 
quickly,  sighed  a  spent  sigh  that  was  half  a  sob, 


THE  GODS  ARRIVE  291 

and  fumbled  his  way  out  of  the  room,  along  the 
hall  and  into  the  street. 

There,  through  a  window,  the  man  at  the  desk 
saw  the  Judge  rubbing,  with  his  bony  fingers,  the 
moisture  from  his  burned-out  eyes;  but  he  was 
marching  proudly  through  some  exalted  heaven  to 
recite  the  story  of  his  great  refusal  to  the  griffin, 
in  her  chains,  and  to  the  adoring  mortal  who 
watered  his  shrine. 

"  And  I  have  seen,"  mused  Archimedes,  as  he 
drummed  on  the  desk  with  the  little  pine  lever  that 
moved  his  world,  "  the  half  gods  go  and  the  gods 
arrive !  " 


THE  STRANGE  BOY 

THEY  had  just  returned  from  their  work  in  the 
Manual  and  were  considering  large  matters  con 
cerning  their  coming  hike.  They  were  Twelve, 
Thirteen  and  Fourteen,  and  full  of  the  joy  that 
washes  into  life  with  the  first  full  tides  of  youth. 
At  the  Manual  they  had  been  making  things  with 
their  hands  in  wood  and  iron  and  stone.  Creation 
seemed  good  to  them.  And  they  talked,  making 
their  to-morrow  a  kind  of  exalted  yesterday,  which 
is  the  way  of  youth.  An  old  party  of  forty-five, 
sitting  near  them  reading  a  musty  book  that  had 
been  off  the  list  of  best  sellers  for  six  long  months, 
closed  the  book  over  his  finger  to  mark  the  place 
while  he  listened  to  the  chatter  of  the  boys. 

There  was  talk  of  a  day's  walk  in  the  country; 
of  a  raft  to  be  made  at  the  river  under  the  scout 
master's  direction;  of  fishing  tackle  to  be  had  at 
the  town's  stores;  where  the  best  rods  might  be 
bought;  what  minnows  were  worth.  Some  con 
sideration  was  given  to  the  various  grades  of  khaki 

292 


THE  STRANGE  BOY  293 

for  scouting  suits.  Also,  not  a  little  incidental 
gossip  was  sprinkled  through  the  talk  of  the  bat 
ting  averages  of  the  baseball  kings,  and  of  records 
on  the  high-school  tracks  of  those  nearer  and  more 
palpable  heroes  whose  prowess  was  attainable  even 
to  Twelve  and  Thirteen  and  Fourteen. 

They  were  good  scouts  of  the  first  and  second 
classes,  and  much  of  their  chatter  was  of  the  camp 
and  the  field.  The  old  party,  hearing  of  river- 
bends  where  he  had  sounded  the  flat-bottomed 
depths,  and  of  fields  that  were  woodlands  in  his 
day,  and  of  rifles  he  had  dammed,  let  the  hand 
with  the  book  drop  to  his  knee  as  the  talk  woke  in 
his  heart  a  faint  pulse  from  some  underconscious- 
ness  that  had  not  been  stirred  for  years. 

The  boys  were  lying  on  a  lawn  beneath  the  stone 
veranda  railing  whereon  his  old  feet  rested. 
From  time  to  time  the  youngsters  looked  up  as 
automobiles  went  whizzing  by  and  in  monosylla 
bles  checked  off  the  makers  and  perhaps  the  own 
ers  of  the  machines;  but  the  checking  did  not  stay 
their  talk  of  the  glorious  to-morrows,  silvered  and 
gilded  with  yesterdays.  Life,  through  the  boys' 
eyes  and  in  their  visions,  was  a  splendid  picnic; 
and,  like  every  picnic,  it  was  away  from  home. 


294  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

The  garage  in  the  rear  of  the  lot  whereon  they 
were  lying,  the  coal  bin  in  the  cellar  of  the  house 
beside  them,  the  great  shade  trees  that  overhung 
the  lawn,  the  formal  rows  of  flowers  and  clumps 
of  shrubs  about  them,  the  wide  parking,  the  as 
phalted  street  before  them,  and  the  house  behind 
them,  had  small  place  in  their  tall  talk.  The  ath 
letic  field,  the  ward  play-ground,  the  gymnasium, 
the  public  highway  beyond  the  town  limits,  and  the 
river,  which  to  them  seemed  designed  as  a  part  of 
their  rather  formal  business  of  playing,  furnished 
their  minds,  like  set  pieces  in  a  clean  and  well- 
appointed  room. 

"Canned!"  sighed  the  old  party.  "Canned 
boys !  "  he  repeated. 

The  boys  looked  up  and,  seeing  the  feet  dis 
appear  from  the  railing,  Thirteen  rose  quickly  and 
said  as  he  appeared: 

"Yes,  sir.  What  was  it,  Father?  Did  you 
speak?" 

The  old  party  shook  his  head,  and  the  boys 
stretched  out  again  on  the  blue-grass.  As  he 
opened  his  book  and  fumbled  for  his  place,  over 
the  page  top  he  saw,  coming  round  the  house  from 
the  rear,  a  thin,  freckled,  barefooted  youth,  with 


THE  STRANGE  BOY  295 

long  trousers  rolled  up  halfway  to  his  knees,  show 
ing  the  flowered  calico  lining.  Suspenders  striped 
the  shoulders  of  the  boy's  coarse-checked  blue-and- 
white  cotton  shirt.  Twisted  into  his  right  suspen 
der  was  a  Y-shaped  stick,  wound  with  rubber, 
whereon  a  diamond-shaped  leather  piece  dangled 
from  two  strings. 

"  If  the  marshal  sees  that  he'll  arrest  you !  " 
said  the  man;  and  as  the  strange  boy  grinned  the 
old  party  asked:  "Where  have  you  been  so 
long?" 

The  other  boys  did  not  seem  to  notice  the 
strange  boy,  who  grumbled  as  he  sat  down  beside 
them: 

"  Doing  my  chores.  Old  Sooky's  calf  like  to 
never  got  her  supper  out  of  the  bucket.  And  old 
Sooky  tried  to  hold  up  on  me.  I  think  they  ought 
to  make  somebody  brush  the  flies  off  while  I  milk. 
I  bet  old  Sooky  hit  me  in  the  eye  a  dozen  times 
with  her  tail.  Say,  they's  a  mangerful  of  kittens 
in  the  south  stall;  but  I  bet  the  old  Tom  will  eat 
'em  up  before  mornin'  if  the  girls  don't  take  'em 


in." 


The  other  boys  looked  up  when  the  old  party 
shifted  his  feet  and  groaned: 


296  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

"  Oh !  These  are  not  real  boys  —  they're 
canned  boys !  All  the  other  industries  have  left 
the  home  for  the  cannery  —  why  not  boy-making? 
Here,  boys!"  The  old  party  lifted  his  voice 
sharply. 

1  Yes,  sir!  "  cried  Fourteen,  rising  agilely  and 
saluting. 

4  Which  one  of  you  knows  what  wood  makes 
the  best  arrows  ?  Which  one  of  you  ever  seasoned 
a  piece  of  hickory  behind  the  stove  over  the  wood 
box  all  winter  for  your  bow?  Do  you  know  what 
bodark  is?  " 

*  Yes,  sir,"  replied  Thirteen.  "  It  is  a  corrup 
tion  of  the  French  words  bois  d'arc,  meaning  wood 
of  the  arch,  and  is  probably  an  Indian  translation 
of  the  French  habitant's  word  describing  the 
tough,  springy  wood  of  the  Osage  Orange,  or  com 
mon  hedge  plant." 

The  strange  boy  grinned  and  the  old  party  an 
swered  : 

"  Oh,  grand!  Now  then,  Bud,  you  tell  them 
about  the  bodark." 

The  boys  sat  down,  and  the  old  party  took  the 
words  from  the  strange  boy's  mouth  and  went 
on: 


THE  STRANGE  BOY  297 

"  Bodark  is  a  hard  brown  wood  and  makes  the 
best  bow  you  ever  saw  —  better  than  hickory  even. 
Few  boys  that  I  knew  ever  had  a  bodark  bow, 
though  all  of  them  knew  that  the  Indians  prized 
bodark  highly.  Bud  " —  the  old  party  turned  to 
the  strange  boy  — "  do  you  remember  that  Beasley 
boy  whose  mother  was  scalped  by  the  Indians  in 
the  raid  of  '69,  when  the  Cheyennes  came  up  from 
the  territory  and  cleaned  out  all  the  settlements 
along  the  creek  bottoms  and  carried  that  boy  off 
when  he  was  a  baby? 

'  Well,  he  came  back  when  he  was  ten  years 
old,  a  thorough-going  Injun  —  silent,  stubborn, 
mean,  revengeful;  but,  lordy-lordy,  what  a  shot 
with  a  bow  and  arrow !  And  what  a  lot  of  things 
about  horses  and  dogs  he  knew,  and  how  he  could 
get  round  in  the  woods!  You  boys  think  you 
worship  Ty  Cobb  or  Johnnie  Kling;  but  we  boys 
bowed  down  before  Jack  Beasley  as  to  a  graven 
image.*' 

Twelve,  Thirteen  and  Fourteen  were  chinning 
by  the  stone  railing  and  eagerly  looking  at  the  old 
party,  who  smiled  at  the  strange  boy. 

"  Bud,"  cried  the  man,  "  do  you  remember  how 
we  gave  Jack  our  marbles?  " 


298  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

"  And  he  put  'em  in  his  slingshot  and  threw  them 
at  the  birds,"  answered  the  strange  boy. 

"  And  we  were  proud  of  his  scorn  of  the  mar 
bles  !  "  laughed  the  old  party. 

"  He  threw  my  black  agate  —  my  best  black 
agate,  that  cost  me  twenty  glassies  and  a  dozen 
potteries  and  a  whole  cigar  box  of  commies  —  he 
put  my  black  agate  in  his  slingshot,  whirled  it 
round  his  head  and  killed  a  pigeon  with  it  on  a 
roof." 

"  And  he  taught  us  the  Injun  pinch,"  laughed 
the  man  as  he  closed  his  book.  "  Say,  Bud,  give 
the  boys  an  Injun  pinch !  And  he  sold  us  by  mak 
ing  us  eat  Injun  turnip  —  and  about  burned  our 
mouths  out." 

"  I  can  taste  it  yet;  but  I  was  mighty  proud  to 
be  sold  by  Jack  Beasley,"  said  the  strange  boy,  and 
added :  "  What  a  mean  little  devil  he  must  have 
been!" 

"  And  filthy  too !  Why,  Bud,  do  you  remember 
the  day  at  the  old  limekiln  swimming  hole  when 
Jack  cooked  a  chicken  without  cleanin'  it,  and  ate 
it  —  tops  and  all?  " 

The  strange  boy  grinned.  :{  But  how  he  could 
run !  Used  worm  oil  on  his  legs  to  make  'em  lim- 


THE  STRANGE  BOY  299 

her;  put  a  lot  of  fishworms  in  a  bottle  and  fried 
'em  in  the  sun;  and — •" 

"  Snake  oil  that  was,"  interrupted  the  old  party. 
"  Say,  boys  " —  the  man  addressed  himself  to  the 
youths  whose  faces  beamed  cherubically  over  the 
rail — "  suppose  you  could  have  Ty  Cobb  and 
Teddy  Roosevelt,  and  the  greatest  scoutmaster  in 
the  world,  and  the  greatest  football  player,  all 
rolled  into  one  right  here  in  the  yard  —  who  would 
wait  in  the  barn  while  you  — " 

"  What  barn?  "  cut  in  precise  Thirteen. 

'  Well,  the  garage,  then  " —  the  man  corrected 
himself  and  hurried  on  — "  while  you  went  into  the 
house  and  stole  fried  cakes  for  him,  and  — " 

"  Stole  what?  "  cut  in  Twelve. 

lS  Why,  fried  cakes  —  doughnuts.  Don't  you 
boys  eat  doughnuts?  " 

"No  man  in  training  would,  I'm  sure,"  ex 
plained  Fourteen. 

"  Oh,"  humbly  returned  the  old  man,  drawing  a 
deep  breath.  "  I  forgot  you  boys  are  highly  sani 
tary  —  absolutely  pure !  You  probably  never  ate 
sheep  sorrel,  nor — " 

"Nor  sucked  a  grapevine  in  spring  —  nor  ate 
redbuds?" 


300  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

"  Bud,"  smiled  the  old  party,  looking  into  the 
blue  eyes  of  the  strange  boy  with  that  fond  remi 
niscence  which  is  the  keenest  joy  of  maturity,  "  do 
you  remember  how  we  used  to  go  trailing  through 
the  woods,  browsing  off  the  young  fresh  twigs  like 
gods  in  the  elder  days?  " 

"  Perhaps  we  were  gods,"  replied  the  strange 
boy. 

The  old  party  gazed  mutely  for  a  moment 
across  the  green  carpet  of  the  lawn  and  saw  a 
strange  thing:  A  thick,  deep  wood,  stretching  up 
over  a  wide  bottom  land;  a  shimmering  stream, 
flashing  in  merry  ripples  over  brown  stones;  a 
water  bird  flickering  round  a  distant  bend,  disap 
pearing  as  into  some  mystic  sanctuary;  overhang 
ing  elm  trees  far  up-stream,  shading  green  water; 
a  curling  path,  leading  down  to  the  brink,  a  path 
worn  smooth  by  a  thousand  boyish  feet.  And  he 
heard  —  above  the  heron's  cry  and  the  jay's  fret 
ting,  blended  indistinctly  with  the  mourning  dove's 
complaint  —  the  far,  shrill  call  of  boys'  voices, 
chattering  like  the  herons  and  the  jays  —  voices 
that  came  through  the  underbrush  nearer  and 
nearer,  until  soon  the  woods  resounded  with  their 
calls.  In  a  moment  he  saw  them  flash,  naked  and 


THE  STRANGE  BOY  301 

beautiful,  into  the  still,  green  water,  and,  running 
up  the  slanting  elm's  great  branches,  drop  scream 
ing  with  joy  from  the  elm  top  into  the  pool. 

*  Yes,"  he  answered  softly;  "  perhaps  we  we-re 
—  perhaps  we  were !  " 

"Perhaps  we  were  what?"  insisted  Fourteen. 
:<  What  are  you  talking  about,  Father?  " 

"  Can  you  make  a  whistle  from  a  hickory  sap 
ling?  "  replied  the  old  party,  ignoring  the  question. 
"  Can  you  make  a  horn  from  the  stem  of  a  pump 
kin  leaf?  Did  you  ever  belong  to  a  band  that 
went  trailing  out,  single  file  and  naked,  through 
a  cornfield,  and  down  through  the  horse-weeds  of 
the  tall  timber,  to  a  swimming  hole,  playing  on 
horns  made  from  pumpkin  vines,  with  the  little 
boys  blowing  on  peach  leaves  held  between  their 
upright  thumbs?  No;  you  never  did  such  a 
thing!"  He  shook  his  head  sadly.  "Well, 
Bud  and  I  have  done  just  that!  " 

14  Did  you  have  feet  like  goats,  Father?  "  sug 
gested  Twelve  timidly. 

1  Yes ;  hard,  callous,  cut,  bruised,  sore,  brown, 
ugly  and  adventuring  were  our  feet,"  answered  the 
old  party.  "And  those  were  the  pipes  of  Pan 
—  those  pumpkin-vine  horns,  those  hickory  whis- 


302  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

ties,  and  those  peach-leaf  clarinets.  And  once 
we  got  a  conch  shell  from  the  whatnot  and  sang 
into  it,  and  made  wonderful  music.  Bud!  Bud, 
do  you  remember  that?  " 

The  strange  boy's  face  beamed  with  delight, 
and  Thirteen  cut  in  : 

"How  very  interesting!"  and  then  asked: 
"  What  is  a  whatnot,  Father?  " 

The  man  looked  his  mild  scorn  at  the  question, 
but  only  the  strange  boy  saw  it,  and  he  chuckled: 

"  They  don't  understand!  They  were  never  as 
we  were.  They  are  of  the  higher  order." 

"  I  think,"  mused  the  man,  u  when  the  barn 
went  the  half  gods  went  and  these  gods  appeared. 
The  barn  was  the  temple  of  earlier  gods  —  they 
who  were  neither  brutes  nor  gods,  but  half  of 
each.  The  barn  was  our  real  abiding  place. 
Why,  Bud,  when  the  old  barn  went  and  the  garage 
came,  I  saw  each  timber  go  as  one  bids  good-bye 
to  an  old  friend. 

uThe  very  rafters  were  sacred!  There  our 
trapeze  swung;  there  the  rings  dangled  on 
which  we  turned  buzz-wheels;  there  was  our 
springboard  before  the  haypile  in  the  manger; 
there  we  gave  our  shows ;  there  we  played  our  first 


THE  STRANGE  BOY  303 

casino  and  seven-up ;  and  there  we  learned  in  whis 
pers  the  great  mysteries  of  life.  The  barn  was 
the  boy's  Eden.  He  entered  it  in  the  sweet  inno 
cence  of  childhood  and  played  ghosts  there,  and 
talked  with  voices  there,  and  held  communion  with 
the  gods;  and  when  he  left  it  —  when  the  barn 
no  longer  held  him  —  its  creaking  doors  banged 
on  him,  and  he  walked  past  the  flaming  sword 
into  life,  filled  with  the  knowledge  of  good  and 
evil !  What  will  boys  do  when  there  are  no  more 
barns  ?" 

"Come  on!"  said  Fourteen,  taking  his  chin 
from  the  stone  railing.  "  Father  is  tired." 

The  three  sprawled  on  the  close-cropped  sward 
—  on  back  or  belly  as  it  pleased  each;  and  the  talk 
droned  from  carbureters  and  a  cynical  criticism  of 
the  talking  movies  to  the  proper  weight  in  tennis 
rackets,  then  into  the  local  boy  problems  in  wire 
less,  and  on  into  the  mysteries  of  the  new  pul- 
motor  over  at  the  engine  house  of  the  fire  depart 
ment.  But  on  the  veranda  the  old  party  and  the 
strange  boy  were  holding  forth  on  the  splendours 
and  glories  of  the  Golden  Age. 

"  And  yet,"  returned  the  strange  boy,  "  what 
they  have  — •  all  this  large  leisure  to  consider  the 


304  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

universe,  all  these  store  things,  all  this  machine- 
made  pleasure  and  formal  joy  —  was  what  I  hoped 
for,  what  I  longed  for  most  eagerly.  They  are  as 
I  would  have  had  the  angels  in  my  heaven.  They 
are  the  visions  I  saw  of  good  boys  made  perfect." 

"  And  you,"  repeated  the  old  party  gently, 
"  you,  Bud  —  you  are  the  dreams  I  dream!  " 

"  I  wonder,"  smiled  the  strange  boy  through 
his  great  brown  freckles,  u  if  your  next  heaven  will 
be  so  —  well,  so  different  in  a  way  from  what  you 
thought  it  would  be  —  as  my  heaven  is  here !  " 

"  I  wonder  too,  Bud!  "  The  old  party  drew  a 
deep  breath  before  going  on.  "  I  wonder  if  our 
heaven  isn't  mostly  behind  us !  " 

"  I  know,"  said  the  strange  boy,  "  I  should  not 
be  so  wise  for  my  age;  but  living  with  you  has 
kind  of  wised  me  beyond  my  years.  So  I'll  ven 
ture  to  guess  that  most  of  our  heavens  are  behind 
us  —  when  we  pass  forty-five." 

'You're  a  nuisance,  boy!"  laughed  the  old 
party.  "  Some  day  I'm  going  to  discharge  you  — 
fire  you  —  throw  you  out  —  get  rid  of  you !  I 
wouldn't  keep  you  round  but  for  one  thing, 
and—" 

"And  that  is— " 


THE  STRANGE  BOY  305 

"  And  that  is  because  if  it  wasn't  for  you  I'd 
die !  You  are  the  cupbearer  who  brings  me  the  oil 
of  gladness.  You  bring  the  quick  clank  of  steel  on 
dark-green  ice;  the  whizzing  landscape  that  reels 
past  the  bob-sled.  You  carry  with  you  the  taste 
of  hackberries  in  winter  woods,  and  in  your  whistle 
is  the  call  of  redbirds,  glistening  like  divine  fire 
among  the  sombre  woods  of  February.  You  take 
me  trudging  to  my  traps  in  the  winter  dawn,  and 
teach  me  again  the  intimate  secrets  of  the  field  and 
water  and  timber  lot,  and  the  tangle  of  the  un 
broken  forest.  Because  you  come,  I  remember  the 
joy  of  splitting  black  walnut  and  hackberry,  and 
how  the  crooked  stick  fills  up  the  wood-box. 

"  Ah,  but  you're  a  rascal,  Bud !  You're  a  ras 
cal  ;  a  wool-dyed  villain !  How  slow  you  work 
before  Sunday  School !  How  long  you  lie  behind 
the  blackberry  bushes  in  the  back  garden  in  the 
shade  when  your  hoeing  takes  you  past  this  shel 
ter  I  What  a  thief  you  are  —  stealing  old  man 
Boswell's  tobacco  from  the  field;  swiping  old  man 
Howe's  chickens,  and  rolling  off  old  man  Swing's 
watermelons  from  in  front  of  his  store!  While 
old  man  Young,  wearing  his  marshal's  star  of 
great  pride,  chases  you  through  the  alleys  to  your 


306  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

pirates'  cave !  Old  man  Garrison  knew  you  when 
you  raided  his  apple  wagon  in  the  autumn  with 
your  apple  stealer.  All  the  old  men  knew  you  for 
a  scoundrel  —  old  men  who  were  in  their  forties 
then!  Old  men?  Old  men  who  only  died  two 
decades  ago !  Old  men?  Ah,  Bud,  only  one  old 
man  in  all  the  world  ever  knew  you  and  loved  you 
—  just  one  old  man!  " 

The  strange  boy  turned  away  and  pretended  to 
be  interested  in  what  the  youths  were  saying  on  the 
grass  below. 

"  Bud,  I've  been  pretty  good  to  you  —  haven't 
I  —  since  you  came  back,  twenty-five  years  ago?  " 

"Was  it  that  long  ago?  Why,  I  thought  it 
was  only — " 

'Twenty-five  years,  Bud!  I  didn't  miss  you 
so  much  for  half  a  dozen  years ;  and  then  when  you 
did  come  back  I  rather  — " 

'  Yes ;  you've  spoiled  me  probably,  so  far  as  that 
goes,"  the  strange  boy  broke  in;  "  made  a  pet  of 
me  —  and  a  fool,  more  or  less." 

"  But,  Bud,  answer  me  this,"  said  the  old  party 
quickly :  "  What  became  of  you  in  those  years  — 
those  beautiful  years  of  youth?  Where  did  you 
go  and  why  did  you  go  ?  " 


THE  STRANGE  BOY  307 

The  strange  boy  stood  still  and  looked  at  the 
ground. 

"Aw  —  why,  that's  all  right!"  he  answered 
evasively.  "I'm  here,  ain't  I?  Say,  do  you  re 
member  the  time  we  tied  Nate  Brown  to  a  tree  all 
night  down  in  Balch's  hog  lot,  and — " 

"Stop  it,  Bud!  Answer  me:  Why  did  you 
go?" 

"Do  you  want  to  know,  honest  —  honest?" 
asked  the  strange  boy,  drumming  his  fingers  on 
the  cool  stone. 

"  Honest  to  God,  Bud!" 

"  Won't  you  ever  tell  —  her?  " 

;{  Who?  "  He  followed  the  strange  boy's  eyes 
toward  the  house ;  and  the  old  party  went  on  with 
his  oath :  "  Honest  to  God,  Bud !  Hope  to  die ! 
Hope  to  be  any  name  you  can  call  me  —  cross  my 
heart,  and  hope  to  drop  dead !  " 

"  Well  —     Aw,  I'm  not  goin'  to  do  it !  " 

"  Ah,  yes !  Come  on !  Why  did  you  leave  me 
so  suddenly  and  only  come  back  in  my  dreams? 
Come  on,  Bud!  Tell  a  feller  something,  Bud!  " 

The  boy  looked  at  the  open  door  of  the  house. 
He  stepped  close  to  the  old  party. 

"Aw  —  well,  it's  nothin'  much  —  only  she  — 


3o8  GOD'S  PUPPETS 

her  in  there  —  that  used  to  live  across  the  alley  — 
Well,  you  know  just  as  well  as  I  —  Aw,  I  ain't 
a-goin'  to  tell !  " 

The  old  party  looked  gently  into  the  strange 
boy's  red,  shame-coloured  face.  Tears  streaked 
through  the  freckles,  but  he  tried  to  smile. 

"  Go  on,  Bud;  I'll  understand." 

"  Well,  you  remember  that  night  she  was  stand 
ing  by  the  fence,  that  June  evening  when  we  came 
home  from  Pilliken's  party?  Well,  doggone  it, 
she  killed  me  —  killed  me  as  dead  as  a  nit,  I  tell 
you !  She  did  —  she  who  is  in  the  house  —  she 
who  has  been  in  the  house  all  these  years  —  she 
killed  me,  I  tell  you !  "  The  strange  boy  wagged 
a  vengeful  head  toward  the  door. 

"  How?  Why,  how,  Bud?  "  exclaimed  the  old 
party  under  his  breath,  also,  furtively  keeping  his 
eyes  on  the  door. 

"  With  that  —  that  — •  Oh,  you  know  —  with 
that  first  awful  kiss !  " 

"  Oh  —  I  —  see !  "  replied  the  man.  "  And  so 
she  — " 

'Yes,"  interrupted  the  strange  boy;  u  she 
turned  me  into  a  dream  and  you  into  a  man  —  and 
we  parted." 


THE  STRANGE  BOY  309 

As  the  book  fell  to  the  floor  the  old  party  cried : 

"Son!  Son,  how  about  that  music?  Isn't  it 
time  for  your  practicing?  " 

"  Just  a  minute,  daddy!  "  called  back  Fourteen. 
'*  I'm  inventing  a  new  kind  of  airship,  with  an 
armour-plate  bottom,  for  war!  "  And  the  young 
men  saw  visions. 

The  old  party  smiled  sadly  and  sighed  as  he 
saw  the  strange  boy  dragging  himself  slowly  round 
the  corner  to  finish  his  evening  chores,  limping 
heavily  as  he  went,  and  whispered  : 

"  And  the  old  men  dream  dreams !  " 


THE    END 


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The  Abyss 

BY  NATHAN  KUSSY 

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With  the  publication  of  this  book  a  new  Jewish  novelist 
is  introduced,  one  whose  work  is  of  such  outstanding 
character  that  his  place  in  American  literature  is  hence 
forth  assured.  "  The  Abyss,"  which  bears  more  than 
one  resemblance  as  regards  subject  matter  to  "  Oliver 
Twist "  and  "  Les  Miserables,"  tells  of  the  life  of  a  Jew 
ish  lad  in  the  underworld.  The  story  of  his  association 
with  beggars,  criminals  and  the  outcasts  of  society  and 
of  his  never  ceasing  struggles  to  escape  from  the  muck 
of  his  environment  is  revealed  with  almost  photographic 
accuracy  and  vividness.  The  volume  is  remarkable  for 
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A  boy  is  the  hero  of  this  book  —  a  live  boy,  good,  bad 
and  indifferent  at  times,  but  always  real  and  likable. 
The  story  of  his  youth,  of  his  escapades,  of  his  "  growing 
up  "  days  in  the  Palouse  country,  of  his  comrades,  par 
ticularly  his  boon  companion,  "  Mart  Campin,"  is  full  of 
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The  Little  Lady  of  the  Big  House 

BY  JACK  LONDON 

Author  of  "The  Star  Rover,"  "The  Call  of  the  Wild," 
"  The  Valley  of  the  Moon,"  etc. 

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In  this  story  of  a  woman  whose  life  is  shaped  by  a  great 
love,  Mr.  London  adds  at  least  three  characters  to  his  al 
ready  notable  list  of  literary  portraits  —  Dick  Forrest, 
master  of  broad  acres,  a  man  of  intellect,  training  and 
wealth;  Paula,  his  wife,  young,  attractive,  bound  up  in 
her  husband  and  his  affairs ;  and  Evan  Graham,  traveled, 
of  easy  manners  and  ingratiating  personality,  a  sort  of 
Prince  Charming.  The  problem  comes  with  Graham's 
entrance  into  the  Forrest  family  circle  and  it  is  a  prob 
lem  that  must  be  solved.  To  this,  both  its  presentation 
and  its  solution,  Mr.  London  brings  all  his  powers  of 
construction,  of  visualization  and  of  imagination. 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Publishers     64-66  Fifth  Avenue     New  York 


NEW  MACMILLAN  NOVELS. 

The  Shepherd  of  the  North 

BY  RICHARD  AUMERLE  MAKER 

Price,  $.1.35 

A  big-brained,  big-hearted  American  Bishop  is  the 
hero  of  this  book,  In  the  story  of  his  daily  ministrations 
among  the  people  of  the  Adirondack  country  and  par 
ticularly  of  the  part  that  he  plays  in  the  fight  that  is 
waged  against  an  encroaching  railroad,  the  author  has  a 
theme  which  reveals  a  beautiful  character  and  is  at  the 
same  time  intensely  dramatic.  The  climax  of  it  all  is 
reached  with  a  forest  fire,  which  is  described  in  passages 
of  power  and  vividness.  Incidentally  there  is  introduced 
into  the  plot  a  matter  of  honor  which  serves  to  increase 
the  suspense  and  in  the  solution  of  which  the  novelist 
exhibits,  not  a  little  ingenuity. 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Publishers     64-66  Fifth  Avenue     New  York 


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ttea 


LD  21-100m-12, '43  (8796s) 


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THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


